Misplaced Complaints
by sakiya
Summary: Akane has a story to tell. Are you willing to listen? Next generation
1. Hell is just down the hall

Akane Uzimaki had a strange habit of tapping her feet. She did it whenever she was annoyed, her equivalence of cracking ones knuckles.

Naoki Inuzuka backed up a few steps, eyes fixed on the sandal-clad foot tapping rapidly. He might have gulped, looking up into Akane's eyes, which had gained a very frightening iciness. She glared back venomously.

"I didn't mean to!" He brought up his hands, one of which was still holding a half-empty tin can of paint. Naoki looked at the can as if he had just noticed it, the electric blue flakes around the rim matching perfectly to the large splatter on the girls long-sleeve blue robe top.

Akane carefully placed her bento box on the bench next to her and stood up. Naoki had no idea how awful her payback would be, but he didn't stick around to find out. He dropped the paint can and took off bounding down the hallway. The can crashed into the ground, the paint flying from it like the sparks from the end of a snake-sparkler and spraying across Akane and the rest of the hallway. She brought up her arms to protect her face but her obi, legs, and bento box both got a hearty helping of lead-based paint.

"Aka-chan?" A rather loud, but polite voice asked. Daichi Akimichi was standing in the door way to a classroom, a stack of work books wedged between his arm and side. He took in the incomplete slathering of paint in the hall way and on Akane.

The copper-haired girl groaned, realizing what it must look like. "It…was…" She motioned over her shoulder with her thumb in the direction that Naoki had fled.

Just then a then shrill rang through the academy and Akane groaned again.

"I'm going to be late and covered in paint!" She muttered to herself angrily.

"I can tell Nara-sensei what happened while you got to the bathroom and clean up," Daichi offered, but then he saw the condition of her clothes and added, "Or maybe you should go home and change…"

Akane scooped up her bento box and dumped it in the trash.

"Thanks, Daichi," She said, and turned to go to the bathroom.

In the mirror, she realized why Daichi suggested she go home. I mean, Akane could tell anyone that her clothes had been ruined to the possibly irreversible point, but she didn't carry around a pocket mirror like most of the girls in her class. There were streaks of quickly drying paint in her hair and smears still lingered on her face from the first time Naoki slung the paint across her chest.

Akane checked her wrist watch. She probably could get out to the locker room and back in a few minutes. But she left her sparring uniform at home this morning (She only had hand-to-hand combat classes every other day and took her uniform home to wash because it was starting to smell a little bit funky).

Akane ripped a handful of paper towels out of the dispenser and ran them under the tap.

She rubbed her cheeks raw with the damp paper and made the streaks in her hair less prominent, but they were still noticeable. There was nothing she could do about her outfit, there was a possibly she might have to throw this set away.

Akane went to her classroom and knocked on the door. Nara-sensei slid the door open immediately, as if he'd been standing directly behind it.

"Eh? Daichi told me what happened already," He scratched behind his spiky ponytail, "You need to be dismissed? Or can one of your parents bring you a spare set?"

"Mom's with Tsunade-hime for all of today and I think Dad's at work or something," Akane answered.

"So who threw paint at you?" He motioned with his chin at the rest of the classroom, all of the other students pretending not to listen.

Akane rolled her eyes, directing her gaze at Naoki when they had completed their journey. He still had dried electric blue paint in his hands.

"Alright, you're dismissed for one subject. You have to be back by one-forty-five, right?" Nara-sensei leaned against the door. Akane nodded and he slid the door closed again.

Akane went to her locker and dug her house key out of the side pocket of her side bag. She slammed it shut and headed for the front door.

Her father hadn't come home for lunch, she could tell because there wasn't an empty noodle bowl by the sink and the box of snack cakes in the cupboard was unopened. Akane quickly changed, deciding a shower would take way too long. She brushed her hair back into a high ponytail and was able to get the last of the paint off of her face.

Akane had only eaten half of her bento box, so she opened the snack cake box and took two of the little, spongy pastries. She ate one before she left, locked the door, and was swallowing the last bite of the second when she pulled open the front door of the school.

She stepped into the room and immediately had the feeling of intrusion as everybody turned to stare at her. Akane quickly made her way up to her seat in the _very_ back.

"As I was saying," Nara-sensei drawled lazily, "you're passing exams will be on the 14th, or, for those of you who don't want to figure what day that will be, this Friday. After that, you will be broken up into three-man teams according to your grades and specific skills and assigned to Jounin, who you will stay with until you are promoted to Chunin via the Chunin exam and so on and so forth."

The feeling of intrusion was replaced with one of sheer boredom, one she was sure would have put every one of her classmates to sleep if it had been earlier in the morning.

"-so study. Your exam will be over genjutsu. On another note, open your work books to page 321 and do problems 7 through 25-" Nara-sensei was saying.

* * *

"What happened today?" Umeko asked her, wrapping her lips around the straw of her Styrofoam cup.

"Naoki threw paint on me during lunch and I had to go home and change…" Akane trailed off, sipping on her juice box loudly.

Umeko raised her eyebrows so fast it looked like they were making a break for her hair line. "Is that why he nearly pissed himself when you walked in?"

Akane nodded.

"Hmm, she's cute," Umeko murmured absently, gazing at something across the plaza.

Akane followed to where she was looking. Umeko was staring at Kasogi, who was visiting from the Sand with her father. She was a little younger than Akane but a few months older than Umeko with bright, blood-red hair and dark shadows under her green eyes. Akane's father once said she looked exactly like Gaara-san, only with eyebrows.

"Maybe that means that you'll be accepting any and all missions to the Sand when you graduate the academy," Akane said, snapping Umeko from her trance.

Umeko flushed redder than Kasogi's hair, "Y-yeah, I guess."

Akane smiled, "But I won't be on your team."

Umeko blinked rapidly, "Why not?"

"Because we have the same G.P.O.; my dad said they divide you like strong, mediocre, and weak," Akane recalled flatly.

"I don't think I'll pass! Genjutsu is my _worse_ field. And even if I do, don't they usually have two boys and a girl? That's gonna be boring," Umeko said, faking a depressed tone.

"You'll live," Akane replied shortly, and then she checked her watch. "I have to go. Dad wanted to go to that new ramen stand."

"Don't get anything with fish in it!" Umeko called to Akane as she headed for Eleventh Street. Akane almost laughed. A few months ago, she had taken Umeko to a barbeque restaurant. Umeko got the salmon, ate half of it, and then realized it smelled really weird. It turned out to be rotten.

Tayuya and Naruto, a rather odd looking couple if you asked anybody else, were standing right outside the stand. Akane was very short (a fact she's sort of subconscious about) and didn't even have to bow her head under the hanging paper.

"Do they have anything spicy?" Akane asked.

"Oh, yeah, they do," Naruto leaned around Tayuya on his stool and showed her the menu, "See: Pork and crab ramen with jalapeños." _Fish._

Akane nodded. Naruto straightened back upright to stop pushing Tayuya into the bar.

"So, what can I get you?" The cook from behind the bar approached them and pulled a small notebook from the pocket of her apron.

"Um, I want a large bowl of Miso," Naruto flipped his menu over, "And a regular bowl of Pork and Crab with jalapeños, and…uh, what do you want?"

"A large shark fin," Tayuya told the cook. She took the menus and went back to the stove.

"How was your appointment with Tsunade-hime?" Akane broke apart a pair of chopsticks.

"It went okay. A hell of a lot better than the last one, but it still wasn't all that good," Tayuya grunted.

"I went by Neji's house today to train," Naruto announced. He rubbed his hands together in a plotting manner, "One of these days, I'm going to crack his ultimate defense!"

Naruto might have broken out into maniacal laughter to crack a smile out of Akane, but the cook had brought their ramen.

* * *

"Are you excited about your exams today?" Naruto crooned from across the table.

Akane looked up from the apple she had just bitten (she was really watching the bite mark turn brown) and gave him an incredulous look. "Nervous is more like it."

"I was excited because I _really_ wanted to graduate." Naruto cut his omelet in half with his fork and shoved one half into his mouth.

"That's because you failed three times already!" Tayuya waved a spatula in one hand and a hot frying pan in the other. She cracked open another egg and dumped it onto the hot metal. "Aka-chan, are you sure you don't want breakfast?"

Akane took another bite of her apple and shook her head.

"You should go," Naruto said, looking at the clock over the stove. "I think they start the exams only fifteen minutes after class starts."

Akane said something that was made inaudible by the chunks of apple in her mouth. She stood from the table and took her bag off the coat rack by the door. Akane was actually the only one who used the rack; Tayuya and Naruto tended to throw their jackets on the couch.

"Oh, right! Aka-chan! You were saying that you were nervous about Umeko not graduating with you!" Naruto shouted from the kitchen.

"I told you to stop listening to me when I'm asleep!" Akane yelled back, yanking the front door open.

"_Aka-chaaaan_! Maybe I wouldn't have to if you spoke more when you're awake!" He sang, leaning back through the archway just in time to see the door slam shut behind her.

Akane jogged to the academy, careful not to plow over the other small children on their way up there.

She took a seat in the middle of the slowly filling up class room. Umeko plopped down into the seat next to her, groaning and rubbing the back of her neck.

"I barely got a wink of sleep last night," She complained, "I was having a panic attack the entire time. Are you excited?"

"Why does everybody keep asking me that?" Akane asked in a very serious tone.

Umeko had dark circles under her white, pupil-less eyes that made her look more worn out that Gaara-san did most of the time.

"Just nervous," Akane said.

"Who do you want on your team?" Umeko leaned on her palm.

"I don't care all that much," Akane admitted, "Just as long as its not…"

Both she and Umeko turned at the same time to look at Naoki in the very back. He quickly diverted his eyes to the window, looking slightly scared.

"…him."

"Oh," Umeko nodded solemnly. "Irony is going to have its way and you'll be on his team."

"Don't jinx me!" Akane slapped her shoulder sharply.

Then Nara-sensei trotted in and the mind-numbing buzz of multiple conversations ceased immediately.

He set his bag on the teacher's desk at the front of the room and pulled out a stack of paper booklets.

"Please take out a pencil for the written portion of the exam… Ichigo, can you pass these out?"

Ichigo Umino stood from his seat at the front desk and took the booklets. He circled around, putting three at the end of each table.

"You have forty minutes. The test is multiple choice. Don't freak out," Nara-sensei monotone, taking a seat behind the teacher's desk and pulling an orange paperback book with a slash mark on the back out of his pocket.

Akane flipped scribbled her name on the top line and started reading the questions.

The questions on the first page were easy but it got harder the further back you got. Akane flipped her test over and leaned back, checking the clock. She still had fifteen minutes to burn…

Akane was woken up when the test paper was yanked out from under her palm. Nara-sensei glared at her, added it to the stack in his hand, and moved on to the next row.

Umeko patted her shoulder. "You started rattling off the answers," She laughed.

Akane huffed, "Aw, damn. How many did I list?"

"Just one through fifty."

"The test only had fifty questions," Akane groaned, massaging her temples.

"Okay, the second portion of the test is a practical exam. The practical exam will determine weather or not you graduate but the written exam will go into your final grade, which will determine who your teammates will be," Shikamaru motioned to Mika-sensei and then at the door joining to an empty classroom, "The practical exam will be private and on illusions."

"Yeah," Mika-sensei stood up, "it's in alphabetical order, so Yoshiro Aburame is first…"

* * *

"Hey, Aka-chan," Moe Umino nudged her arm, "You're turn is next."

Akane quickly trudged down the stairs, careful not to push Moe in any way (lord knows that girl is clumsy enough and Akane didn't want to be responsible for another scar on Moe's forehead).

Akane slid the door open and stepped in, closing it behind her.

"Hello, Akane-chan," Mika-sensei greeted. She checked the paper on her clipboard. "You remember how to do paralyzing jutsus, right?"

Akane nodded. Mika-sensei walked around the desk and got down on her knees.

"You will attempt a paralyzing jutsu on her," Shikamaru pointed the end of his pencil at Akane, "Start now."

Akane formed the practiced hand signs, running through them quickly. Then she let out a low continuous whistle. Mika-sensei shivered, her eyes widening, and her arms were yanked up above her head as if they were being bound by invisible chains. Mika-sensei screamed…

…_Blood lust…_

"Thank you, Akane. That's enough," Nara-sensei griped suddenly. Akane's head snapped to face him, the whistle dying on her lips. Mika-sensei groaned, her arms dropping into her lap and she slumped forward slightly. Mika-sensei massaged her temples with her index fingers.

"Ugh, you pass," she groaned.

Nara-sensei gave her a forehead protector with a green band, "Tell Hideki Yamanaka to come in next."

Akane tucked it into her obi and exited the spare classroom. She punched Hideki in the arm to snap him out of the vivid conversation he was having with Osamu Inuzuka.

"You're next," she muttered over her shoulder, going back down to her seat by Umeko.

"Hey, what happened? We heard someone screaming," Umeko demanded as Akane slid into her seat.

Akane pulled her forehead protector out, set it on the desk, and simply said, "I passed."

Umeko exchanged worried looks with Moe, who's usually wide eyes were round and bigger than saucers.

"So," Nara-sensei said, following Hideki out the door, "You will be assigned to a sensei and two other classmates on Monday."

"E-enjoy your weekend," Mika-sensei puffed, her face whiter than a sheet, "Class is dismissed."

"We're Genin!" Moe whooped loudly as they headed down the street towards the plaza to visit the sweet shop.

"Yeah!" Umeko agreed excitedly, jumping up to wrap an arm around Daichi's shoulder (he was about six feet tall already).

Akane exchanged looks with the Akimichi boy.

"Yeah…"

_

* * *

_

_What'cha think? Good? Bad? Awesome? Please review, I'd love it. If you don't know, Akane is the byproduct of my other Naruto/Tayuya fics. _

_A side note: yes, Umeko is gay. But before you ask, no, she isn't in love with Akane. She __**loves**__ her, she just isn't __**in**__ love with her. _

_Chapter two should be up soon._

_----Sakiya_


	2. Irony is a bitch

_**Blink. Blink. Blink.**_

_I glare at the cursor as it blinks repeatedly, mocking that I cannot come up with good way to start chapter two of 'Misplaced Complaints'. But I will come up with something!_

_(Falls over dead after three minutes of brainstorming)_

_Okay, maybe not, but I will try anyway._

* * *

One thing that every member of the Uzimaki household has in common is a severe addiction to caffeine.

Tayuya drinks about four cups of coffee every morning.

Naruto will down just about any soda of any flavor.

And Akane is hooked on energy drinks.

This is partially because of the strange and, at times, just plain bizarre sleeping patterns that tended to capture these people. You could wake up at three in the morning at find at least one, if not all, of them sitting at the kitchen table or on the couch. It also means that the shower, television, microwave, and radio are all often turned on at odd times.

One thing that this proclaimed caffeine craving is that it's fairly easy to piss them off if they haven't had their morning dose of energy boosters.

Akane trudged out of her bedroom, fully dressed and groomed, and turned into the archway to the kitchen. She pulled open the refrigerator door. A half box of tall tin cans rested on the bottom shelf with a twelve pack of cokes. Akane picked one out and slammed the door shut.

She popped the tab and swallowed a large gulp.

Akane shuffled through the large bowel of fruit on the table counter by the coffee pot, examining apples for bruises. While she was slicing two Granny Smith apples into halves, someone pulled on her hair (which was up in a ponytail and still had faint streaks of blue).

"Did you go to bed with your hair wet?" Tayuya asked, reaching into the cabinet for a can of ground coffee beans. Akane shoved an apple slice into her mouth while nodding.

"Ugh, your hair's just like mine; if you don't brush it after you get out of the shower or blow dry it when you wake up, it turns out like shit," Tayuya muttered, turning on the pot. She turned to face Akane, "Do you want me to make you breakfast?"

Akane shook her head, "No, I'm okay. Did you make me a bento?"

"Yep. It's in the fridge," Tayuya replied off handedly, turning back to watch her coffee brew.

Akane got the box from the fridge and ensured there weren't any green peppers in it. Tayuya would never put them in as Akane was horribly allergic, but she still checked.

"You're going to be late," Tayuya noted, pointing at the clock.

Akane grumbled goodbye. She stopped by the gigantic pile of shoes by the door and managed to retrieve a pair of matching sandals. She didn't need her bag today as they were only going to be there for about three hours.

Umeko was waiting at the street corner, a partially eaten onigiri held gingerly between her index finger and thumb. "Hey, foxy-foxy, so nice of you to show up," She waved even though Akane was only three feet from her.

"You've only been her for about three minutes, haven't you?" Akane asked.

"Yes," Umeko took a bite of the onigiri and started heading down towards the academy.

Akane muttered something about her being annoying and followed closely.

The seats in the back were the only ones open, so they trotted up the stairs and took two seats.

"Good morning," Hideki greeted from beside Akane.

"Hey, Hideki-kun," Akane replied. He grinned, waving at Umeko, and went back to examining the room.

"What about Yoshiro?" He asked Akane, pointing at the rather stoic boy near the front.

"But he's a little bit over the crazy line," Umeko leaned around Akane to say this.

"So he's only for viewing purposes," Hideki chided, stroking his invisible goatee.

"And, the elders are afraid he's going to be the next Sasuke Uchiha," Umeko pointed out. Akane sat back so she would have more room.

"But that means he's totally hot under the jacket!" Hideki grinned wider.

Umeko rolled her eyes as if this wasn't worth anything. Hideki grinned impossibly wide, to the point that Akane thought it would have hurt anyone else's face into cracking in half, but it toned down a little bit when Nara-sensei trudged in, looking his usual shitty-ness.

"G'morning," Nara-sensei mumbled, sounding as if he just rolled out of bed.

"Today I will be assigning you into your teams and you will meet your new sensei after lunch," He told them, pulling what looked like a list out of his bag.

Nara-sensei cleared his throat.

"The first team will be: Moe Umino, Hideki Yamanaka, and Yoshiro Aburame…"

Tick

Tick

Tick

Akane absentmindedly watched the needle-thin second hand twitch around the face of the wall clock, tapping her fingernails against the pencil groove at the top of the desk.

"Team four will be: Maoto Nara, Osamu Inuzuka, and Yuu Hatake…"

Tick. Tap. Tick. Tap. Tick. Tap.

"Team six will be: Naoki Inuzuka, Tsubasa Hyuuga, and Akane Uzumaki…"

There was a lot of internal screaming on Akane's part and not so internal freaking out on Naoki's part. He ran his hands through his hair and even looked ready to pull out large clumps. Naoki turned and glanced at Akane, but quickly turned his head back as soon as he spotted the slightly blood-thirsty glare on her face.

"Team ten will be: Umeko Hyuuga, Daichi Akimichi, and Ichigo Umino…"

* * *

"umm…M-maybe you should give me the c-can," Moe held up her hands, leaning cautiously over the table.

Akane looked down at her hand, where a soda can was being crushed. "Oh." She released her vice grip on it and saw that the shape of her fingers had been pressed right into the metal. Moe snatched it up with lightning speed and quickly fled to the nearest rubbish bin.

"I don't see why you're so worked up about this," Daichi told her, putting a clump of rice in his mouth as soon as he was finished talking.

"That's because you don't have somebody you hate on your team," Akane replied, digging her chopstick into her bento at random. She ended up with a spicy sausage half.

"Yeah, it's lucky I have Ume-chan on my team…" Daichi trailed off, eating more rice.

"Awwww, thanks, big guy," Umeko gasped, leaning over the table to give him a one-armed hug.

He returned it, but not with the same hyped up enthusiasm.

By this time, Moe ran out of things to stare at by the trash can and returned to the table.

"What about Tsubasa?" She asked, sipping her green-tea, "he's not so bad."

Akane shrugged, "It's not him I'm worried about."

"You mean 'pissed at'," Umeko flicked Akane on the nose with her fingernail.

"Hey, I wonder who our senseis will be," Daichi blurted out suddenly, his eyes going skyward in a regular thinking pose.

"I hope I just don't get somebody weird…" Akane said.

* * *

"HELLO, STUDENTS!" a man wearing a green jounin outfit with a red forehead protector tied around his waist, a very shiny bowl hair cut, and disturbingly enormous eyebrows, formerly known as Rock Lee, shouted from the doorway.

Every student left in the room, and since it had only been ten minutes since lunch ended, meant _everyone_, turned to look at this oddity.

"Ah, Lee, you're earlier than I expected," Nara-sensei greeted while everyone in the room did internal prayers that this weirdo would not be their sensei. "Your team is number six: Akane Uzumaki, Tsubasa Hyuuga, and Naoki Inuzuka."

There was a wave of sighs as the mentioned three stood from their seats and went down to meet with him.

"Come with me, please," Rock Lee led them out into the hallway, starting to chat-chat-chat the second they'd stepped out onto the street.

"I really think we should get to know each other since we will be working together for at least seven months," Lee-sensei started happily, oblivious to the rather stricken looks on his now-students' faces. "I want you to know how much importance I put into taijutsu…"

On and on and on, it seemed as if he would never stop talking…

"So, Akane-chan, what do you think your worst field is?" Lee-sensei asked, snapping her back into the conversation.

"I'm not all that well at close combat," she answered.

"Do you mean you are better at long-range or that you are not good at hand to hand?" Lee-sensei questioned seriously, which did not suit his appearance or regular activity.

"I'm not really all that strong," Akane admitted, "and I don't usually last in a one-on-one hand-to-hand for longer than a few minutes."

Lee-sensei smiled widely, "Ah, I see. Your talents lie in Genjutsu, like your mother?"

Akane nodded.

"As for close range, I think you need a weapon." Lee-sensei rubbed his chin, thinking. Akane looked across the training field to where Tsubasa and Naoki were waiting for their turn. Lee-sensei seemed to think talking to his students one-on-one was a good idea.

"My old team-mate is a weapon specialist; she owns a weapon-shop. As soon as we perfect your Taijutsu, we can ask her help in getting you better suited for combat," Lee-sensei exclaimed, appearing overjoyed that he came up with a solution.

Akane nodded again.

"Would you mind sending Naoki over?"

Akane stood from her sitting position. "Yeah, sure."

Tsubasa was not a very avid conversation-starter. Nether was Akane, but at least she didn't look at everybody like they just kicked the shit out of her dog. Again, Akane doesn't own a dog; the one previously mentioned is completely proverbial.

Because Tsubasa had gone first, Akane had spent ten minutes giving Naoki a glare that would curdle butter. He was very afraid, she could smell it, but did not show any of it. Instead, he started talking to his nin-dog, a grey-hound named Aoi.

"OKAY, YOUTH-FULL STUDENTS," Lee-sensei cried, what looked like a sunset background falling into place behind him as he did a pose that looked almost inhumane. "TRAINING STARTS FIRST THING TOMORROW! MAKE SURE YOU GET A HARDY BREAKFAST! YOU ARE DISMISSED!"

* * *

"No way!" Naruto hunched over, laughing. "Lee is your Jounin?"

"Now I'm worried," Tayuya muttered. "What if he rubs some of his fucked-up weirdness off onto Akane?"

"I doubt it," Naruto managed, giggling.

"I don't want to be like Lee-sensei," Akane groaned. "Not that way at least."

"He is one powerful mother-fucker," Naruto nodded.

"For a guy who doesn't have any chakra."

"He can open six of the gates!" Naruto replied.

"I thought he could only open four."

"Six!"

"I'm going to bed," Akane stood and headed for the hallway, but stopped shortly and turned to face Naruto. "Is it normal for him to _pose _like that?"

"Yes."

"Honey, I understand," Tayuya said, "The first time he did it in front of me I was sure I wanted to incinerate his ass."

"He was lucky you didn't know any fire-related jutsus back then," Naruto pointed out.

"Yeah," Tayuya agreed, nodding.

Akane just turned and continued the rest of the way to her room.

* * *

_Twack. _

_Twack. _

_Twack. _

_Twack. _

_Twa-_ "OW!"

Akane backed away from the base of the tree, cradling her hand closely to her chest. She gingerly removed the glove, already anticipating the swollen, yellow mark smeared across her knuckles. Akane tucked the glove into her pocket and held up her hand to examine in the fading sunlight.

That mark would defiantly be purple tomorrow. She slowly pressed her thumb into the inflicted area, testing for broken bones. Luckily there weren't any.

"Akane-chan?"

"Hello, Lee-sensei," Akane answered, glancing over her shoulder.

"What are you doing out here? The others went home hours ago," Lee-sensei asked in a worried voice.

"I just wanted to get in a little extra training."

"That looks like overtime, even to me," Lee-sensei said. He turned and checked the sun, which was sinking behind the trees at an alarming rate. "I should take you home before it gets too dark."

"I can get home by myself," Akane replied monotonously, making no indication that she planned to move.

"But, Akane-chan, you are very tired. And hurt! What if you get attacked? I would feel really _guilty_ if I let you go home alone and something _awful_ happened!" Akane was sure that, if the sunset wasn't already in place, it would be there now to add an effect to his speech.

Lee-sensei didn't really wait for an answer.

He picked her up, sort of like how one might pick up a toddler, and slung her over his back; Lee-sensei started making his way back to the village in long strides that made Akane positive that her riding piggy-back was for the best.

"I really respect your youthful enthusiasm for training," Lee-sensei started. "I really do. It is just that I think you need to rest more. You are staying far later than either of the boys and I am sure you get there earlier than them at least four days of the week."

Akane focused on the rocking motion of his steps. It was sort of nauseating.

"I want you to take tomorrow off."

"Why?"

"Just take it off. I was just going to give the team a half day tomorrow because we have a field mission the day after. Besides, I just gave you an entire list worth of YOUTHFUL reasons!" Lee-sensei did sound phased at all.

"Okay, Okay, I'll take it off. But I'm still going on the mission?"

"CERTAINLY!"

"Alright, I guess..."

* * *

_GASP!_

_THANK YOU!_

_But a special thanks_

_To _

_**BlastoFantasto**_

_**Koyama12**_

_**Hash16**_

_**Sithmaster56a **_

_For Faving,_

_To_

_**Haraio **__For commenting,_

_To __**ApexPredator**__ for Faving and Alerting,_

_And _

_To __**Blackmoon7875**__ and __**Ultima-kun**__ for Reviewing, Alerting, _and _Faving _

_This chapter took forever. The ironic thing is, I already have, like, chapter four written in my mind. _

_Hope you enjoied (and reviewed),_

_Sakiya_


	3. Flowers and Miss Black Swamp

Akane woke up at about four in the morning, her bedroom light on and her braid forming an uncomfortable ridge along the back of her skull

Akane woke up at about two in the morning, her bedroom light on and her braid forming an uncomfortable ridge along the back of her skull. She sat up, pulling the rubber bands out of her hair and kicking back the blankets. She was still tired and her hand still throbbed.

She flipped the ceiling light switch and went right back to bed.

Akane woke up again five hours later, this time because of the sunlight filtering though her curtains. She threw back her blanket and went to shower. Training sweat plus hours of inactively and non-showering equaled rank smell.

"Hey, mom," Akane yawned, zipping up her sweatshirt.

"Hey, honey. Listen, I've been blackmailed into brunch by some intolerable bitches-" Tayuya started.

"You tolerate them."

"-SO," Tayuya continued as if Akane hadn't said anything. "I need you to go to the market for me before it gets too hot."

Akane shrugged, "I don't mind."

"Good." Tayuya started towards the door.

"And, mom," Akane said. "It's May. It won't get hot today until about four this afternoon."

"I still want you to go early. They put out better vegetables in the morning; I made a list." She threw over her shoulder as she pulled on her jacket. "It's on the fridge."

Akane put on her sandals and grabbed some money from the cookie jar. The list, as promised, was being held to the fridge with a tiny, black magnet. She folded the dollar bills inside of the notebook paper and tucked it into her pocket. Since they didn't hand out baskets at the market, Akane dug the large, wicker one out from under the pile of scarves and gloves and knit caps in the coat closet (ironically placed behind the coat rack).

The market opened up really early, probably before the sun had even come up, and it was swarming with farmers and hunters, selling their game.

"Hey, little lady!" One of them greeted when he saw her examining the salmons laid out at his booth. "Finest catch around! Would you like some? Or how about some shellfish?"

"What kind of shellfish do you have?" Akane picked up a rather fat looking yellow-belly.

"Shrimp, scallops, muscles, and even a few lobsters," The salesman told her proudly.

"I'll just take these and some scallops," Akane said. She paid for the yellow-bellies and the miniature net of scallops he gave her, continuing to the next stand.

Tayuya had put a number of vegetables on the list, most of which Akane was able to get at one stand. It didn't look like anyone was selling fennel, but she did get sweet potatoes and butternut squash.

"Can I help you?" A very breezy sounding woman asked Akane. She adjusted the brightly colored scarf tied around her forehead.

"Do you have any flower seeds?" Akane asked, fingering through the handmade packets of vegetable seeds.

"Oh, yes, I do," The woman indicated to a basket perched at the top of her moneybox. "Are you looking for something specific?"

"Not really," Akane answered, moving to see the labels taped to the packets. "Maybe something that grows quickly and would look nice in a flowerbed."

"Oh, here. Why don't you try a bulb-flower?" The woman asked.

"I don't like tulips."

"But tulips aren't the only kind. I have peacock flowers and windflowers," The woman raised her over-plucked eyebrows.

"I'll try the peacock flowers," Akane leafed out enough dollar bills for three, as indicated by the chalk board, out of the left over money.

About thirty minutes later, when all the food items had been shoved into their proper shelves and pantries, Akane kneeled down by the flower bed wrapping partially around the enormous Sakura-blossom tree in her back yard.

Because of the time she'd been putting into training with Lee-sensei, her flowerbed had been a little neglected and was now showing signs such as grass shooting up through the dark dirt and some of the flowers needing trimming. Akane rolled up her sleeves and started up-rooting weeds that had grown particularly close to her flowers.

"Um, Akane?"

She looked over her shoulder to see who'd started talking to her. Tsubasa stood awkwardly a few feet away, hands shoved into his pockets.

Akane let her questioning look be her answer.

"I was wondering if you could help me," He removed one hand from his pocket and began scratching the back of his head, unintentionally ruffling his shaggy, black hair.

"With what?" Akane turned halfway to face him.

"You know about…_girl_ stuff, right?" He somehow managed to look more uncomfortable.

Akane squinted at him, "Are you getting your period?"

Tsubasa groaned, letting out a deep exhale. "No, I was hoping you could help me with Yuu?"

"What about Yuu?" Akane was sort of interested now. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, had seen the two of them together since they were twelve. And it wasn't exactly uncommon to see them entwined together somewhere like the park or something; Both of them had the same lazy nature and relaxed attitude.

"I wanted to get her a birthday gift," Tsubasa said, "But I think I need some feminine help…"

"Why don't you ask Umeko?"

"I thought about it, but my cousin doesn't really know anything about Yuu," Tsubasa answered.

Akane quickly ran through the things she know about Yuu:

1. Is the first born of Anko Mitarashi and Kakashi Hatake

2. Is a vegan

3. Is constantly reading paperback books (it is unknown if these are pornographic)

4. Is very environment-loving

"Has she been talking about something she might want? Like a book or a C.D.?"

Tsubasa shook his head.

"Have you ever been in her room?"

"No," Tsubasa shook his head again.

"You're making this unusually hard," Akane told him. Tsubasa shrugged.

"Uhhh…can't get her sweets because she's a vegan and she probably has all the books she wants…" Akane said, more to herself. "What about a potted-plant for her room? Like ivy or a fern? I think they sell designed pots at the Yamanaka's flower shop."

"I'll see later. Are you ready for the mission tomorrow?"

Akane shrugged one shoulder, "Yeah, but was the briefing today?"

Tsubasa nodded, "It's just an escort, but Lee-sensei said to bring water-proof clothing because the area has a lot of marshes."

"Mm, thanks."

* * *

"When are you going to get back from the mission again?" Tayuya asked over dinner.

"Wednesday," Akane answered, "But we might get back a little later if there's a problem, like weather or travel conditions or something."

"Or if you get attacked," Naruto added, shoving a piece of fish into his mouth.

"The girl we're escorting isn't really that high up on the social chain; she doesn't have any major projects resting solely on her survival and she isn't royalty, so we shouldn't have any trouble with major ninjas," Akane said, stabbing a grilled scallop with her chopsticks.

"But you still have to worry about bandits," Tayuya pointed out. "And always be prepared for the worst, or chances are, you're going to come home in a wooden box."

"Don't jinx her, geeze! You should take some snacks like instant ramen or chips. You're probably not going to see a decent restaurant for a few days," Naruto nodded, seeming to agree with his own piece of advice.

"Did you pack enough supplies?"

"Yeah," Akane scooped up the last of her rice.

"You guys leave early in the morning right?" Naruto's words were muffled with his food.

"About seven, why?" Akane stood to wash off her plate in the sink.

"Do you have a med-nin on your team?" Naruto asked.

"Lee-sensei says Naoki has had training with healing chakra." She set her plate in the drying rack.

"I thought Hinata would teach Tsubasa some," Tayuya said to Naruto.

"If she has, then he hasn't said anything about it," Akane conveyed. She looked at the clock. "I better take a shower and get to bed if I want to be able to get up tomorrow."

"Check the fridge before you leave, I'll make you a bento."

"Thanks," Akane called over her shoulder.

* * *

Akane is usually dead to the world when she sleeps. But, she was vaguely aware of the long branches of the Sakura blossom tree scrapping against the balcony and the hum of the ceiling fan in her parents' room. Her curtains blocked out any street lamps posted along the jogging trail behind her backyard; the only light came from her digital alarm clock, the neon red numbers proclaiming it was four in the morning.

She stretched out on her back and strained to see if she could trace the brush strokes in the paint on the ceiling with her eyes, the room as dark as it was. It turned out her night vision wasn't that good.

Akane guessed Naruto would be up in half an hour, all heavy footsteps and groaning, ready to head over to the Konahona police station. He used to be a field worker, going on at least three missions a week and spending the rest of the time in the hospital, but switched over to the Konahona police force when he realized field work was giving Akane nightmares.

The alarm clock in her parents' room started going off. Akane recognized it as Naruto's because the buzz was to a low enough pitch that it wouldn't disturb Tayuya. It stopped abruptly.

The floorboards creaked and yellowish light streamed in through the crack under her door. It darkened as Naruto closed the bathroom door and she heard the shower head start to spit out water.

Akane watched the clock until it said 5:45 before she dragged her butt out of bed. Lee-sensei had dropped by the night before to brief her; he said they would meet at six-thirty. She could hear the television through her wall, a weather forecast saying that it would be pretty warm by ten.

Akane dressed in shorts and a lightweight tunic, her cold and water proof clothing already packed in her backpack. While the fire country was starting to heat up, the marshes around the waterfall village were just about coated in ice. She'd taken Naruto's advice and packed a few cups of instant ramen and energy drinks as well.

Lee-sensei had hinted that if they couldn't find dry land, they might be sleeping in a tree.

Naruto left her a note on the kitchen table, wishing her luck and giving her stealth tips. Right, like he'd ever accomplished anything without alerting at least two people to his presence. Akane folded it up and shoved it as far down into her back pocket as it would go anyway.

The sun had barely come up when she started towards the main building, where they were supposed to pick up Aya Kurosawa, their client.

"Akane," Lee-sensei greeted, "Is your hand better?"

She glanced down at the tight linen bandages wound around her knuckles, palm, and wrist. "The bruise is fading."

"Oh, it did not break?" Lee-sensei paused for a few seconds, "That is good!"

Tsubasa and Naoki arrived at the same time, heavy packs on their shoulders. Aoi nuzzled against the back of Akane's knee, begging for her to scratch him behind the ears. Akane rubbed her fingertips on the top of is head and behind his right ear.

"I almost forgot," Lee-sensei dug into his pocket, extracting a small, plastic box. He flipped it open and passed out earpieces, small microphones, and Velcro straps. "In case we get separated! They are all tuned to channel fifteen."

Akane shoved the piece into her left ear. She fastened the strap around her neck and clipped the microphone to it.

"I want one of you to be with Kurosawa-san at all times, alright?" Lee-sensei asked. They nodded in response to the first almost-command they'd received as of yet.

"Team six?" A jounin asked, looking at his clipboard, "Aya Kurosawa is waiting to leave."

Aya Kurosawa was rather tall and whipcord thin, dressed in what appeared to be a slightly toned down military uniform. She had long, black hair, pale skin, and completely colorless eyes. There was small rucksack hanging from her shoulders.

The report Lee-sensei had dropped off said that she came to deliver the paperwork for a new kind of soldier pill being manufactured in the Waterfall village. She arrived alone, even though her trip to the Leaf village would be much more dangerous that her trip back. Aya, who looked to be in her mid-twenties, simply looked at them and started out the door, stopping once to gesture for them to follow her.

When the gates were swinging shut behind them, Akane realized something.

Damn, she'd left her bento in the fridge.

* * *

I _made this way longer than I intended, so chapter four is now chapter five and the rest of this is going to be chapter four. Sigh. I'm so happy at how many faves this thing has gotten (TEN!) and flames are welcome if you have any. I just got a new key board and I'm still getting used to it so sorry for any type-os. I wish I had an excuse for the grammer mistakes I over look... I hope you enjoyed this chapter. I made it sort of 'mellow'. _

_Sakiya_


	4. You never forget your first

_**Author's Note**__: I don't mean to offend anyone but I refuse to follow the cliché Next Generation stories where Naruto's kid falls in love with Sasuke's kid. I'm sure it was original at one point, but now that's just been milked dry. (Side note: Sasuke doesn't even __**have**__ any offspring in this fic, that's how thorough I'm being to avoid it.) And Akane will not fall in love with any of her teammates. (I've actually already decided who to pair her up with.) And finally, I will be switching narrators in the next chapter, but it will go back to Akane in the chapter after that. _

_If you actually read this, Thank You. _

_Sakiya_

* * *

Aoi barked loudly, straying away from the boundary of the camp once again to splash nose-first into a pool of murky water cleverly hidden by a group of tall reeds. He quickly hit reverse, backing out and shaking the water from his fur.

Akane glanced over, tightening the belt of her trousers. "Stay near the center of the camp until we're ready to leave again," She told him, tucking the hem of her tunic into the waistband of her pants.

She pulled a heavier tunic over her head, followed by a short sleeve shirt and a heavy vest.

"Hey, you done dressin'?" Naoki called around the thin tree barrier Lee-sensei put up for changing.

Akane pulled the laces of her boots. "Yeah, just another minute."

She heaved her bag up onto her shoulders after shoving extra pieces of clothing into it. Akane went around the tree and plopped down on a log. Kurosawa-san went back to change.

Tsubasa seemed distracted, a rather glazed expression on his face.

Akane finished tying her laces and tucked them into the sides. She dug an energy drink out of the bottom of her bag, securing the straps. Naoki wrinkled his nose, "Are you addicted to those or something?"

Akane sipped on it. "You could say that."

"They taste gross," Naoki said.

"So don't drink them."

Lee-sensei buttoned up his jacket and pulled out a map. "We will leave as soon as we are done changing," He cast a wary glance up at the white sky, which was visible through the tree tops, "Before any bad weather comes in."

"Oh, Naoki," Lee-sensei focused back on him. He held up the back of his forearm and pointed to what looked like a large, discolored leech latched onto his skin with his other hand. "Can you get this parasite off?"

Naoki dug around in the pocket on the front of his backpack and pulled out a disposable lighter. "No problem. It's like last summer when I went into a swimming hole," He chuckled and made a gesture, then flicked out a small flame. "Osamu didn't tell me there were giant chi leeches in the mud and I had to go to the hospital for a transfusion."

The parasite screeched when the fire touched it backside. Naoki seized it and yanked it back; Akane was surprised to see elongated tentacle-like legs still buried in Lee-sensei's flesh. Naoki set a flame under them, too, and the parasite retracted its legs, howling louder.

Naoki went to the edge of the camp and tossed the parasite off into the water. He returned to bandage the wound.

Kurosawa-san finished changing and came around, casting a wary glance at the sky. Akane looked upward, too, but the sky looked pretty unmenacing to her. They started out again after thoroughly demolishing any evidence that they had been there.

A piece of solid looking ground sunk under Akane's foot and she found herself up to her thigh of one leg in swamp water with the other leg bent awkwardly so that the heel of her foot was by her hip.

"A little help would be appreciated right now."

Lee-sensei took hold of her shoulders and easily lifted her until her leg straightened out. Akane muttered her thanks and started to ring the water out of the soaked portion of her pants.

"Well," Naoki shrugged, his tone optimistic, "at least we know not to go that way now."

Akane's socks got soaked through and she had the feeling she wouldn't be able to feel her foot for a while.

Tsubasa stopped, inhaling sharply.

"Do you hear that?"

It was a sharp whistle sound. And it was coming in their general direction.

A rather odd shaped kunai flew past Lee-sensei's head and lodged itself in the mud. Akane might have bent over for a closer look, but the exploding tag on the end of it froze her cold. The tag started sparking at its edge, making the paper spin.

Akane acted on instinct.

She tackled Kurosawa-san, driving her a good seven feet back before the tag went off, its heat wave sending them the rest of the forty-three feet away. Akane felt her wrist twist painfully, and Kurosawa-san must have landed on something unpleasant too because there was a brief whimper of pain from beneath her.

The faint smell of blood wafted through the reeds, mingling with swamp gas and a strange mixture of a sort of leathery smell and a tree-like scent.

It was Tsubasa's blood. There wasn't much of it but she could still smell enough to let her girl/maternal/worry wart instincts to take over briefly and force her to peek up over the tops of the reeds in search of a mangled body.

She dropped back down, shaking off the instincts and replacing them with text-book ninja training.

"Shit!" Naoki growled, his voice crackling with static, over his microphone, "It's an ambush!"

_( A/N: This is actually where I intended to end the last chapter.)_

Akane was torn back, or rather, thrown back, away from Kurosawa san. She skidded to a halt, standing to her full height, hand jerking down to her kunai holster. Something flew over her shoulder and she fell down into a crouch.

What the hell kind of ninjas threw _rocks_?

Naoki growled loudly, this time not over the intercom; Akane heard the sound of metal connecting with flesh violently. There was another yell, this time it was from Lee-sensei declaring to the attackers that they would _not_ win.

Akane moved back to find Kurosawa-san, but the woman seemed to have disappeared.

A small hand clamped around her ankle, making her spin and point a kunai at whoever had a vice-like grip on her. It was Kurosawa-san, struggling to inhale.

Akane instantly started whipping the blood and mud from the woman's face. The blood was gushing uncontrollably from a messy gash across her neck. It was sort of diagonal and too close to the collar bone; Assassins usually go for just under the jaw.

Kurosawa's eyes focused on something behind Akane.

In hindsight, why had Akane been so stupid? Why hadn't she looked? Why didn't she realize the danger until it was too late?

She received a sharp blow to the base of her skull. Akane could feel ripples of shock coursing down her spine as her neck and head jerked awkward. She managed to stand and stager two steps before collapsing face first into the marshy ground.

Akane could see Kurosawa-san. She was obviously dead, her eyes empty and her mouth sort of open. Kurosawa-san had an expression of worry frozen on her facial features…

The first thing Akane noticed when she woke up was how fucking cold it was. A tall, unsteady stool wobbled beneath her feet and heavy, iron shackles squeezed her wrist; the shackles were chained up to a dead bolt on the ceiling.

The second thing was that there were cow carcasses hanging from hooks all around her. They had been stripped clean of their skin and organs and decapitated, only red muscle still clinging to the bones.

Akane heard a door somewhere open, followed by heavy footsteps. The person shoved a carcass, the screech it made on its hook sending her teeth on edge.

The man, early twenties with light grey hair and off-white eyes, approached her. He circled once, twice, eyeing her like something he might want to eat. Finally, he stopped in front of her.

The man raised his foot and put it up on the stool. He kicked it back and Akane's arms were yanked above her head viciously as her body lunged down. She set her jaw and swallowed her cry of pain.

He merely observed the expression on her face and tilted his head to the side, giving her a smile that honestly made her fear for her life.

"You're so pretty…I'm going to enjoy breaking you."

* * *

_Dun Dun Dun_

_Please give me your options on this chapter. _

_Thanks for reading and please review, _

_Sakiya _


	5. Angry Benifits

Ryuunosuke Hashimoto

The narrator of this chapter's name is Ryuunosuke Hashimoto. He's from a village I gave the working title of 'Village of Hearth' to. It's apparently much hidden because barely anyone knows about it…and it's very conservative (an example of that is _prostitutes_ aren't even allowed to wear open-toed shoes). They have a large Hunter Nin section of their government; Ryuu-kun is actually one of them.

I modeled the way he speaks after a friend of mine. She used to speak only Spanish, but now can only understand it. She can't speak complete sentences in Spanish.

That's how Ryuu-kun is except with Japanese.

Language for this chapter:

"_Blah_"- Japanese

"Blah"- Korean (the language of his village)

* * *

The target, Haine Yuu, had been moving frequently but her Chakra trail was strong enough not to lose her completely.

Ryuunosuke closed his eyes, focusing. A mental picture of the printed pages in her file flashed across his vision. He couldn't find anything on the mental pictographs that would help him.

Haine, like the true shadow she was, easily blended into crowds and therefore stayed close enough to large cities to plunge in whenever he showed his face. She knew him too well, taking advantage of his dislike of large commotions and common knowledge to keep his status hidden. In forethought, Ryuunosuke should have turned down a hit placed on his ex-partner (and ex-girlfriend).

The edges of the city were purely slum with buildings that had their lead-based painted walls collapsing. Ryuunosuke was on his fourth cup of coffee and second cigarette since the sun went down and half the people who walked past him were eying his boots, bag, and the chain hooked to his belt.

He tossed the Styrofoam cup in the gutter, shooting a threatening look at a thug who had completely stopped. Haine was nearby, he could feel it.

Ryuunosuke started towards the faint signal her core was giving off, which was surprisingly moving towards the boundaries of the city. When had she ever been that fast?

The street sort of blurred under his feet, the kind of thing that happens when you're long on adrenaline and short on patience. He caught a whiff of jasmine mixed with malice. Ryuunosuke followed it intently, hand reaching for a weapon on his person as by trained habit.

"Ryuu-kun."

Ryuunosuke skidded to a stop just outside of the city limits. Haine gave him a pleasant smile, as if she were happy to see him. The way she clenched her fists so tightly the knuckles were turning white told him that she wasn't.

"Or is it Ryuunosuke-sensei?" Haine's voice suddenly reeked of contempt. She idly pointed the tip of her dagger at the new flourish on his tattoo. "You were promoted?"

"What?" He taunted to counter-balance her attempted conversation, "Finally realizing the reason I was always two steps I was ahead of you?"

Haine growled low in her throat, "Arrogant."

Ryuunosuke snorted, "Like you were ever lady modesty."

"At least I knew to tune it down around superiors." Haine shifted casually.

"At least I didn't bottle up my emotions and twitch until I flat out cracked!"

"I didn't crack!" Haine blustered defensively.

"Well," Ryuunosuke pretended to think, "You attacked Mori and the Kage's daughter, destroyed the memorial, and then ran like mad."

Haine set her jaw angrily.

Ryuunosuke could feel her chakra spiking with her rage.

And then she appeared to have vanished. Ryuunosuke chased after the still-hot chakra trail.

She didn't go back to the city like he'd expected, instead heading blindly into the dark landscape around them. Haine's somewhat awkward looking running technique was rather unorthodox, but effective. (It sort of threw him off when they were originally paired together.)

But when she stopped, Ryuunosuke had a brief memory attack (also known as a flashback) from when he was little.

When he was about four he tried to climb up a light pole that was connected to a live wire. He was lucky he didn't have to get his arms amputated.

And he knew how much being electrocuted fucking _hurt_.

Can you guess what happened?

His attacker didn't even have enough balls to get him from where he could see him. He shoved something prong-like into the slope of Ryuunosuke's back. Ryuunosuke jerked his head back, clipping the guy in the mouth with the back of his skull. His attacker cursed loudly (now recognizable as a man) and twisted the prong.

The shock wasn't supposed to be lethal, but it was powerful. It sort of went straight up in a controlled manner. Ryuunosuke felt himself convulse, his muscles tightening and expanding erratically with the trauma of being paralyzed. He couldn't feel any part of his body in the few seconds it took for the current to reach his brain stem.

It would honestly be difficult to come up with a good enough analogy to describe the level of anger Ryuunosuke was feeling when he came around.

How _**dare**_ they steal his prey?

Ryuunosuke's limbs felt rubbery as he pushed himself up into a crouching position. He rolled his arms around in their sockets and straightened up right.

Ryuunosuke held out his hands; his skin was whiter than a sheet and his fingers twitched. He rubbed his hands together, focusing. When he opened his eyes, Haine's chakra trail glowed visibly over the terrain.

Why was it that he was always chasing her and never catching her?

He had to stop when the trail led him into snow country; there was at least four feet of powder and his sleeveless shirt just wasn't going to cut it. Ryuunosuke managed to get a couple of thin jackets to layer together, keeping in mind the rule of snow terrain.

You sweat, you die.

It was easy from there, tracking her, I mean. The trail ended at what looked like an abandoned military base; Close to the ground as it was, Ryuunosuke was probably only seeing fifteen percent of the building.

Ryuunosuke blocked the sun from his eyes with one hand as a sort of make shift binoculars. He saw four cameras: two by the automobile entrance, one up in the empty guard tower, and one up on the walkway on the roof, all of them making sweeping motions. Defiantly not abandoned.

He dug one of the rolled up leather packs from his bag. He opened it and pulled out five senbon. He hung the bag from a tree branch, just high enough to be out of the normal persons eye range. Aiming carefully, Ryuunosuke flung the first one, watching it plunge into the lens of the guard tower camera. The walkway one was next.

He had to time it so that neither of the cameras by the gate would catch a glimpse of him, but still managed to vault up onto the walkway, dropping into a crouch the minute his feet met the concrete. Ryuunosuke glanced around, looking for more cameras.

He crept across the landing, cautious of employees that came out for fresh air or a smoke break. At this point, the question was: service entrance or air conditioning duct? Except, there wasn't a service entrance; just an average sized hatch on the ground.

Ryuunosuke eyed the rusty bolt on the hatch's door warily. That thing would surly creak.

He peeked through the slots on the air duct. Bolted on both sides with quickly revolving blades of a fan about two feet bellow. What? No ultra-sensatory beams?

He groaned, about to turn back around when the hatch creaked open and a man wearing something similar to a Nazi uniform with fur trim climbed out. He shut the hatch, locked it, and tucked the key back into his belt. The man appeared to not have noticed him, walking to the edge of the walk way and pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

Ryuunosuke rubbed his palms together quickly to bring warmth back into them and got another senbon out. The man took a drag from his cigarette, shaking the match, and looked around, stopping as he saw the camera with a needle in its lens; Ryuunosuke buried the entire senbon into the back of his neck. He took the key from the man's belt, shoving him over the guard rail.

Ryuunosuke closed the hatch behind him, but didn't lock it in case he needed an extra escape plan. It was like a freaking maze, with several sets of iron stairs. Ryuunosuke had to close his eyes, relying on thermo traces to navigate. It was extremely cold.

When he opened his eyes, he felt like he was in a hospital. The place looked like they sprayed bleach into the air.

A few doors down, Ryuunosuke saw heat. He pushed the door open.

Haine lay on the operation table, unconscious due the heavy amounts of morphine they were probably pumping through her i.v.. Ryuunosuke glanced at the surgical tools, shiny and laid out, ready for use. He found none of the scalpels suited his tastes.

Ryuunosuke extracted his obsidian scalpel. It was obvious that he couldn't take her head, but that's what identification tattoos were for. Whenever you got a tattoo, it was recorded in you file along with a picture. He folded back the sheet, pressing the tip of his scalpel against the side of her navel where a faded image of a frog with angel wings perched over a set of numbers had been inked.

Ryuunosuke carefully worked the skin up, exposing the smooth muscle beneath. When he ha pulled it clean, Ryuunosuke encased it the strip of skin in protective plastic and stored it in his forehead protector.

He tilted Haine's head back and slowly penetrated the flesh under her jaw with his scalpel. Blood emerged thickly, coursing down the slope of her neck to pool in her hair. The pool was the size of a saucer when Haine's heart monitor started beeping franticly, the screen blinking red.

Ryuunosuke yanked the sticky sensors off her chest and abdomen. The monitor's screen went black and it stopped screaming but he could hear the heavy, uneven steps of scientists running to their specimen. Ryuunosuke grabbed the folded gauze on the surgical tray and shoved it into his pocket.

Within two seconds, someone had twisted his arms behind him, turned him around, and bent him against the top of a shiny metal cabinet. That someone's knee pressed roughly against the slope of his back, pushing Ryuunosuke's cheek hard into the metal.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see three or four people gathered around the table. They were trying to stop the bleeding with the sheet, but Ryuunosuke knew she'd already lost about three pints of blood; if the heart monitor was still hooked up to her, it probably would be beeping too slow, even for someone who's supposed to be asleep.

"_How did he get in here?"_ The man holding Ryuunosuke demanded.

"_I don't know!"_

"Maybe you should actually check those cameras," Ryuunosuke grunted, "I broke a few on my way in."

The fleeting expressions of confusions on their faces told him they didn't speak Korean.

"_We should kill him,"_ the man said.

Another man backed away from Haine, who's chest had stopped rising, and whipped a bloody hand across his brow. He pulled back and looked at it as if surprised before taking off the latex glove. "_No, he killed her, so he should be her replacement._"

None of the heat in Haine's body had faded yet.

"_But there's nothing left of her cell!_"

The man pulled off his other glove and waved his hand impartially, "_So put him in with another experiment, preferably one that won't kill him."_

The guy restraining Ryuunosuke pulled him back into standing up straight and roughly pushed him towards the double doors,

He was searched, but not very well as he still had several blades and tags on his person when they shoved him through the door. It clanked behind him, the no-doubt ancient lock forced back into place. It screeched one more time and Ryuunosuke heard their feet retreating.

He turned to take in the room he'd be sharing. It was empty, save for a bed, a toilet, a sink, and a chair.

The room felt like it had been lived in for a while, but the bed looked cold as if it hadn't been slept in. The pillow and blankets had been stripped off; they looked sort of warm, bundled up against the far wall. The chair had a bunch of folded up clothes on it, a Leaf forehead protector on the top of the pile.

Ryuunosuke carefully picked it up. It wasn't as dirty as the clothes, probably held precious. He checked the back of the plate out of habit, remembering that several of the other students in his graduating class put their names back there.

Two sets of Japanese Kanji were carved, one more jaggedly than the other.

"_Umino Iruka"_

"_Uzimaki Naruto"_

Ryuunosuke glanced at the clothes. "Naruto" sounded like a boy's names, but those weren't boy's clothes. Ryuunosuke poked a pair of long trousers. Most of them, anyway.

He dropped the forehead protector on top of the pile and began searching for flaws in the room; almost every crack in the room, every escape possibility was sealed up tight.

The door creaked again behind him and Ryuunosuke turned immediately. A soldier charged through the door, shoving a cattle prong into his chest. Ryuunosuke backed up, what apparently the soldier wanted. Two more soldiers came in carrying what appeared to be a girl, a pair of men in white coats lingering near the door.

They put her on the bed without a second glance at Ryuunosuke, leaving almost immediately. The door screeched shut again, but he only heard the soldiers foot steps leaving, the men in white coats staying behind.

Ryuunosuke pressed his ear to the door, listening to what they were saying. He guessed the girl was what they were talking about, due to the brand on the inside of her arm…

He pushed himself away from the door and edged closer to the girl. She was unconscious, fresh bruises on her skin and blood staining the set of medical scrubs she was wearing. He patted the back of her shirt, where most of the blood seemed to be coming from. It was dried into the fabric in most places, but wet on her shoulder blade.

Ryuunosuke carefully pushed up the back of her shirt.

Ryuunosuke saw that most of the blood was from a deep incision with messy, careless stitches. He carefully slid the tip of one of his scalpels along the incision, intent on replacing the no-doubt rushed stitch work. The wound was easy to clean and obediently sealed shut as he pulled blunted wire through.

There was another incision along her lower spine. It was long, with stitches that looked neat, close together, and skillful. Ryuunosuke imagined the focus and time it would have taken to make such precise stitch work. There was a thin layer of salve over the incision. Compared together, this one looked more like a controlled surgery; the other one seemed to be corrective of a mistake, a resistance, maybe, with a scalpel being the only weapon available.

He slid her shirt back down, glancing at her legs and arms again.

She looked like she had suffered a combination of experiments and abuse.

Ryuunosuke went back to the clothes, folding up a set as thinly as he could. He put the forehead protector in his pocket, reminding himself that she'd probably been taken from her village without permission.

Ryuunosuke tucked the clothes between two of the jackets, noticing when he zipped up his jacket that there was still blood on his hands. He went to the sink and ran them under the tap until there was no trace of pink in the water anymore.

The girl was pretty and Ryuunosuke suddenly felt worried, like watching a little kid run down the street with his shoelaces untied.

Ryuunosuke gathered the fitted sheets around the girl, bundling her up into a burrito. He checked to see how easily he could lift her. She was lighter than he expected. He gingerly set her back down.

Ryuunosuke dug an exploding tag out of his pocket and fastened it to the center of the door. He quickly crossed the room and lifted the girl up, bracing himself.

The door flew in as he expected. Well, part of it. It slammed into the wall next to them, accompanied with a large amount of black smoke. Ryuunosuke spun on his heel, hurling himself out the door and down the hall. That sort of explosion drew tons of attention.

There were no windows in the building.

Ryuunosuke ran in a random direction, mentally estimating the probability of which of the two escape routes he could think of would be the most successful. Head down stairs to the automobile entrance? There was a chance he wouldn't be able to open the gate and become cornered with a small girl on his back.

Head back upstairs to the roof and get off the same way he got on? He could land wrong and injure himself or they could track him down too quickly.

A tongue of lightning shot over his shoulder. Ryuunosuke didn't need to look back, mostly because he never saw the guy in the first place, to tell it was the man who'd attacked him in the field. He turned around, not quite sure what he was going to do until he sucked in a lung full of air.

The fire burned his mouth, as usual, on its way out.

Ryuunosuke hurried up the closest set of stairs, the scent of burnt flesh still lingering around him for some reason. The hatch out to the roof was still unlocked.

A throwing knife embedded itself into the hatch to the left of his head. Ryuunosuke didn't remember getting cut, but blood soaked through his jacket. He shifted the girl further up on his back and pushed out the hatch with his shoulder.

Ryuunosuke hurried to the far right side of the building, where the ground was a smaller drop from the roof. Snow was pelting down more than it was when he went in.

He dropped into a crouch upon landing and rolled. Scooping the girl back up, he tossed her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and channeled chakra into the soles of his feet.

Ryuunosuke ran until his chakra felt half-way depleted.

He skidded to a halt on a small rope bridge, kneeling over for breath.

The girl mumbled incoherently. He slowly lifted her off his shoulder and laid her on the wood, remembering that she was only wearing a pair of scrubs. The sheet must have somehow come off during their great escape. He pulled the folded up clothing out and shook her a little.

The girl made a jerking noise, shifting off of her arm.

"Come on," Ryuunosuke coaxed softly, lifting her up a little. She caught a fistful of his jacket and pushed herself up onto her knees.

"_Wah? W-where?"_ She massaged her thumb into one of her eyes, looking out over the terrain.

The girl jerked back away from him when she finally caught sight of just who she was using as a cane.

"Ahh," Ryuunosuke started, holding both hand up, palms out. He remembered the name in the forehead protector. "Naruto?"

The girl blinked in confusion. _"How do you know that name?"_

Ryuunosuke fished the forehead protector out of his pocket and held it out. "Is," He stopped, realizing that she couldn't understand him. "Uhh, _Your name?"_

She shook her head. "No." The girl took the forehead protector from him.

Ryuunosuke stabbed a finger to his own chest. "_Ryuunosuke_." He held out his hand to her.

The girl took it. "_Ryuu-kun? I'm Akane._"

Ryuunosuke smiled. "_Aka-kun_."

Akane shivered, pulling her hand away. Ryuunosuke shoved the clothes at her. "_Better dress._"

Akane quickly layered the clothing over the scrubs.

"_Where are you from?"_ She asked conversationally.

Ryuunosuke blew warm steam into his cupped palms and rubbed them together for warmth. "_Village of Hearth_." He pointed at her. "_Konahona, right_?"

Akane nodded. "_But I've never heard of the Village of Hearth. Is it small_?"

Ryuunosuke shook his head. "_Hidden."_

"_Of, course_," Akane said. She zipped up her jacket and tied the forehead protector around her neck like women usually do. She tried to go in the direction they just came from but Ryuunosuke stopped her.

"_How…taken?"_ He hesitated, searching his memory for Japanese words.

"_I was ambushed_." She stumbled. Ryuunosuke knelt down to look closer at her calf. He slowly pressed the tip of his finger against it.

"_Ow_," Akane flinched in a rather violent way. It was a little amusing, but Ryuunosuke tried not to smile.

"_I think broken_," Ryuunosuke told her.

Akane groaned. Ryuunosuke started rolling up her trouser leg. Most of her calf was a nauseous yellow, sure to be black in a few hours. He eased a small amount of healing chakra into her calf muscle. Akane relaxed a little.

Ryuunosuke pulled her pants leg back down and spun around, still crouching.

"_On_."

"_I think I can walk by myself_," Akane said.

Ryuunosuke shook his head. "_Still broken. On_."

Ryuunosuke heard her mutter something but she obediently did as he asked. He straightened up, a little thrown at first by her extra weight, but evened out.

"_So_," He started, glancing around, "_Direction?_"

"_What_?" Akane asked, tightening her grip on his shoulders.

"_Your village. Direction_."

"_Oh, what country are we in?"_ Akane asked.

"_Snow_."

"_South-west_."

"_Ahh_." Ryuunosuke started towards the end of the bridge, heading towards the setting sun as soon as he was off.

"_Thank you."_ Akane yawned. "_I guess I owe you for this."_

Ryuunosuke shrugged his shoulders, "_A favor a few years from now might be nice_."

"_That sounds good enough_…" Akane trailed off, her breathing evening out as she fell asleep.

* * *

_Also, Much love for Haraio, who comments every time I post a chapter. It is deeply appreciated. _

_Sorry it took so long to post. My sister accidentally deleted everything I've ever written, so I had to retype this from scratch._

_Please review._

_Peace, Baby._

_Sakiya_


	6. The problem with talking

"Umm, what are you allergic to?" Sakura asked.

"Green peppers and Penicillin," Akane said.

"Alright." Sakura nodded, smiling, but the examiner shook his head.

"That's on her medical file. Anyone could see it." The other examiner nodded in agreement to what he said. Naruto made a sort of sound that wasn't of the speaking variety but still said a lot.

"I think you're making this difficult. This sort of questioning is completely unnecessary," Akane said. "You already got the DNA test back."

"Yes," the female examiner said, "but as your mother proves-" she looked straight to Akane's left where Tayuya was sitting "- genetic cloning is possible."

Tayuya growled. "But Akane would have to be willing for it to work! An unwilling trail would only produce a younger identical twin."

"How younger?" the female examiner asked.

"An infant. It would have to spend nine months in a test tube then grow naturally."

The male examiner cleared his throat. "How do we know she wouldn't be willing?"

"If they wanted to send a duplicate back to- I don't know - stop you from looking for me, I wouldn't be willing," Akane could feel her voice rising with her temper.

"Please calm down," the female examiner said softly. "We're just trying to ensure that you are who we think you are."

"Who do you '_think'_I am?" Akane demanded, "You're treating me like a traitor! I wasn't even gone long enough to get out of puberty and you're acting like I could've been cloned or trained to come back and kill everyone or something!"

The female examiner blinked in surprised. "I see you inherited your mother's temper."

Both Naruto and Tayuya glowered at her.

"Wait," Hinata said, "Why don't we ask her for something she did before the mission?"

"Like what?"

Hinata didn't answer, instead turning to Akane. "I think you helped Tsubasa with something."

"He wanted help getting Yuu a birthday gift," Akane answered slowly, "I think I told him to go to Yamanaka's Flower Shop."

"We'll ask him later."

"Umm, maybe you could tell us what happened to you while you were being held hostage," the female examiner suggested.

Akane shook her head. "I don't want to talk about it."

"But-"

"She said she didn't want to talk about it," Naruto cut her off.

"But any information she gives us could help-" The female examiner sounded exasperated.

"'Help'? How could talk about her torture right after she gets back help?!" Tayuya demanded.

"Maybe you could give her a month to recover," Hinata offered softly.

"Mmm," Akane said, "I was drugged most of the time, but bring me a sketch book and I think I can draw out the rooms I was in. I can describe most of the people I saw to one of those sketch artists at the Police Station."

"Alright," She said, not sounding all that satisfied, "We'll get on that."

"Did you get everything you needed from the examination?" Akane asked Sakura.

"Yes, I did," Sakura said, checking the paper on her clipboard.

"What happened to Ryuu?"

"Tsunade is questioning him," Naruto answered.

"We can release you as soon as your blood work comes back," Sakura told Akane.

"I'll go home and get you a set of clothes," Tayuya said, standing. The examiners left, too.

Naruto got up, following them out.

Sakura smiled, "You can take a shower if you want."

Naruto came into Akane's room carrying a half box. He set it down on the table and Akane saw it was full of take-out containers.

Naruto smiled at her when she looked at him. "I know from personal experience how much this hospital's food sucks."

Akane smiled back, fishing out the plain rice and a fried shrimp omelet. Naruto perched himself on the end of her bed. He pulled a tin dish out for himself and glanced around.

"Your mom back yet?"

Akane shook her head.

"What's going to happen to Ryuu?" She asked, breaking apart a set of chopsticks.

Naruto shrugged, "Tsunade contacted his village. They're sending someone to get him."

"Are they treating him like a criminal?" Akane swallowed a clump of rice whole.

Naruto wagged his head, stuffing a wad of noodles into his mouth. "They kind of want to know why he risked his life to save you. According to him, he had infiltrated the building to kill someone they caught, but ended up captured himself. What a dimwit, huh?"

Akane didn't answer, waiting patiently for him to continue.

"Well," Naruto stopped to swallow the chicken he'd been chewing, "He says he'd been planning to escape anyway, and it was just luck that you were there."

"I don't think he would have left you," Naruto added, stabbing his chopsticks in her direction, "Like he would have been guilty or something."

"He told you all of this?" Akane set aside the empty rice box and moved on to the omelet.

"We got a translator in there after it became obvious that Japanese wasn't his first language. Or his second."

Akane smiled at the joke.

"He wanted to know if you were okay. It was the first thing he asked us about when the translator got in there," Naruto thought for a few seconds. "I think he's too old for you."

"Dad!" Akane threw the rice box at him. It flew over his head.

"I'm just sayin'," Naruto said, holding up one hand defensively. "Maybe if you were a few years older."

Akane shook her head at him, finishing off the omelet.

"And if I was dead."

She laughed at this. "He sort of reminds me of you."

Naruto shrugged again, shoving another clump of noodles into his mouth. "You should have seen your mother's face when Lee and them came back without you. She nearly killed him, demanding answers."

"And then," He twisted the top off of one of the bottled waters on Akane's bedside table. "She went to Tsunade and demanded that Tsunade take the seal off so she could be on the search party they sent out. You know the one that forces her to stay in the village."

Akane nodded. She ran her fingers across the small burn on her forearm.

Something occurred to her.

"How long was I gone?"

Naruto choked on his water. He glanced at her face quickly, and then became intrigued with a dark green spot on the carpeting. Akane had to clear her throat before he answered. "Almost two years."

"But," He said, trying to change the subject, "I kept your garden thingy alive and weed free. Your mom added a few things to it. We didn't touch anything in your room. Although, I can't say the same thing about your friends. They took a few things from your dresser and book shelf."

"Do they know I'm back yet?" Akane asked.

Naruto shook his head, "I don't think so. Sakura might have told Umeko, though."

Tayuya came in then, a small duffle bag hanging from her shoulder.

She set in on the bed between Naruto and Akane, unzipping it.

"I'll go talk to Tsunade," He told them, practically fleeing at the sight of panties.

"You've probably outgrown everything in your closet," Tsunade said. "We can go shopping later and probably get you a trim."

Akane instantly ran her hands through her hair.

She pulled on the clothes Tayuya provided, noticing they were the largest ones she owned. A while back they hung off her, but fit snuggly now.

Akane slipped on the shoes Tayuya gave her.

Tayuya looked through the empty containers in the half box. "He brought you greasy food while you're in the hospital? Jeez, that idiot has no idea how to feed people."

Akane looked out the window for a few seconds, wondering if she'd need something heavier.

"I talked to the man who brought you back," Tayuya said suddenly. She folded up the empty bag and set it in the half box. Akane could tell from the expression on her face that she hadn't meant to say anything.

"I want to talk to him before he leaves," Akane said, running a brush through her hair.

Tayuya gave her this unreadable look. "That's fine."

Sakura wondered in, looking through the papers attached to her clip board. "There is some evidence of a heavy tranquilizer in your blood; it's become watered down enough to stop having any effect. But if you feel dizzy or start hallucinating, that may be from what's left of it. " She dug a pen out of the pocket on her apron and scribbled on a small pad of paper. "I'm going to prescribe a light sleep aid and pain reliever. The tranquilizer should be out of your system in a day or two if you drink lots of water."

She tore a sheet off the pad and held it out to Tayuya. Tayuya shoved it into the front pocket of her pants.

Sakura smiled at Akane the way everyone had been doing lately. Like one frown would crack her into a million pieces. "All right, just sign out at the front desk and you're welcome to go home. Be careful, it started sleeting a few minutes ago."

Naruto intercepted them at the door. He glanced back over his shoulder at where Tsunade was speaking with Shikamaru. "I'll be a little late coming home, all right? I need to talk with Kakashi and Tsunade about a few things."

Tayuya pushed the paper bag with the pill bottles in it into her pocket. "Both of you had dinner already. Call ahead before you come home."

The street lights had flickered on already when they started out.

"What's been happening while I was gone?" Akane asked. She swallowed against the cold air that stabbed at her throat.

"Naruto got promoted to second in command," Tayuya started. "I think it's really stupid that they'd want a ditz like him assigning people to cases." She shook her head. "Tsunade is going to step down from the Hokage position next year, but Naruto isn't the only one they're considering for the position. Hinata's been rethinking her move back from the waterfall village because she was disinherited from the Hyuuga line. I don't know how Neji even got her to come back in the first place."

They both turned into the underpass of their building, heading up the stairs to their apartment. Tayuya unlocked the door.

"Your teammates, Tsubasa and Naoki, passed the Chunin exam."

"I thought you needed a three man team to enter the exam," Akane said, hanging her jacket on the coat rack.

"No, there's a new examiner this year." Tayuya flicked the light switch to the kitchen.

"Oh, did Lee-sensei get a new team?"

"No, he didn't," Tayuya said, picking up a plate off the table and running under water in the sink. Akane went down the hall to her room. The door stuck when she tried to push it in and she had to put her entire body weight on it for it to jerk open.

Her wardrobe was open and a few garments had been tossed onto her bed and the back of her desk chair. Akane kicked off her shoes and started gathering them. She shoved them back into the wardrobe and shut the door.

There was a light layer of dust around the bottles and knives on her dresser, a few spaces in the dust from where a knick knack or two had been taken.

She shrugged out of her coat.

Tayuya came in, setting two pill bottles and a glass of water on her bedside table. She yawned as she was leaving, "Goodnight, baby."

Tayuya closed the door behind her and Akane heard her get something out of the living room and take it with her to the master bedroom. It was probably the handheld phone.

Akane turned on her lamp and picked up the first bottle. Pain relief. One pill by mouth, twice a day. Refills available. She twisted off the top and shook one into her palm. It looked like a sweet tart. Akane chewed it up and took a drink of water.

Second bottle. Sleep aid. Two pills by mouth before bed. Allow seven to eight hours of sleep. No refills. Akane swallowed the two capsules that looked sort of like aspirin and finished off her water.

Akane lay back on her bed without even taking off her sweater.

Morning came sooner than she expected, a drowsy feeling clinging to her head as soon as she sat up. She pushed back the quilt that had been put on her and pulled her sweater off over her head. Why was one of her socks missing?

Akane took off the other one and stumbled into the kitchen. She sat down across from Naruto and yawned, waving her left hand in greeting. "Good morning."

Naruto smiled and said something that was completely muffled by the food in his mouth.

"Do you want breakfast?" Tayuya asked, wiping her hands off on a rag.

"Yes, please." Akane's stomach growled at that moment.

All the clothes in Akane's wardrobe and dresser were removed and put in plastic crates and stored under her bed with the rest of the clothes she outgrew. They were replaced with new ones, a few sizes bigger. Her hair was cut to the same length it was before she left and the grocery shopping took at least an hour. Tayuya ran out of things they could do together that didn't involve cooking. No one ever spoke of the food Akane made, usually because thinking about it made them just as nauseous as the food itself.

Tayuya started making lunch and Akane wandered out into the back yard.

Her garden wasn't in the best shape, but that was probably due more to the weather than Naruto's greed thumb. Akane carefully stabbed the frozen soil with a trowel. It didn't budge in the slightest. She sat it to the side and shifted to unfold her legs out from under her.

"_AKANE_!"

Akane jerked in alarm, turning to see Lee-sensei hunched over, apparently winded. He smiled at her and straightened, wiping the beads of sweat away from his brow.

"I cannot believe you are back!" He exclaimed excitedly. Akane stood up. Lee-sensei wasn't so much taller than her now, but he still had a good foot on her. He hugged her carefully, squeezing her shoulders more than necessary.

"I'm not a ghost, Lee-sensei." Akane patted his back awkwardly until he released her. Affectionate human contact wasn't really her thing.

"You were gone so long! You are alright?" Lee-sensei asked.

"I will be. The worst is over," Akane said. "Although I doubt my life will pick up like nothing happened."

"Well, I could help you if you wanted to work in the village or resume…field work." Lee-sensei seemed reluctant to add the last part.

"I was thinking of taking an internship at the police station or hospital," Akane admitted.

"Do you still want me to train you?"

"Of course, Lee-sensei. And I still want that specialized weapon you promised," Akane said, smiling.

"Do you want to go right now?" Lee-sensei asked, sounding a little surprised.

"I don't mind."

Suddenly Lee-sensei had tears streaming down his face as he crushed her in a hug, a suspiciously bright background falling behind him.

"YOUR YOUTHFULL ADDITUDE IMPRESSES AND INSPIRES ME!"

"Thank you. That's nice to hear," Akane grunted into his chest, "But I'm still not going to wear neon green spandex."

Lee-sensei stopped crying. "How about dark green mesh?"

"That'll work fine, I guess."

"Tenten's shop is still open for the holidays; let us go!" Lee-sensei cried, pulling Akane along by her hand.

"So, you're better at long range? Do you want something you can throw?" Tenten asked, purple flowers were stuck in her buns.

"Not really. I think I need something to keep enemies far enough away from me. Like a club or something?" Akane looked up at a rack bolted from the ceiling with a variety of swords hanging on it.

"How about a Bo or spear?" Lee-sensei asked.

"I've never used either before, but it sounds like a good idea," Akane answered.

"I suggest you try to get a feel in your fighting style for a Bo before you try a spear," Tenten said. She pointed at a few staffs propped against a rack of blades. "A simple wood one is the easiest to train with."

"I think one of my parents has one of those," Akane said, remembering seeing one somewhere around their apartment.

"Alright, come back if you need a new one." Tenten smiled, waving goodbye to them as they left the shop.

"I have a meeting I need to go to," Lee-sensei checked his wristwatch. "Are you alright to get home by yourself?"

"I can make it. Good luck at your meeting." Akane waved her left hand idly.

Lee-sensei didn't look as if he wanted to leave her alone. "I am here if you need someone to talk to…"

"I'm sorry, Lee-sensei," Akane said, "But I don't want to think about it, let alone talk about it."

Lee-sensei smiled at her again. "I am glad you are back."

Akane smiled appreciatively. "I'm glad to be back."

"Have a good day!" Lee-sensei whooped, running off.

Akane barely turned in the direction of her house before she was lifted off the ground. She quickly gripped the shoulders of whomever it was who had enthusiastically wrapped their arms around her waist and was now…swinging her from left to right. All Akane needed to see to identify the person was a mop of platinum blonde hair.

"Hideki?" Akane asked, more in surprise than disbelief. This wasn't the first time he'd done this.

Hideki stopped swinging her but didn't put her down. He grinned at her.

"Hi! You're Akane!"

"Umm," Akane blinked down at him, "did you skip out on your medication for the past month or two?"

"Maaaybe," Hideki sung, letting her feet touch the ground but still kept his arms locked in place.

"Hey, Hideki! Why'd you take off running like tha-" Moe called, but as she saw Akane she stopped. "Akane!"

Daichi and Umeko, who'd been following closely behind her, skidded to a stop as well.

"Hi, Moe. Nice to see you." Akane looked at the other two. "Hey, guys."

Daichi pulled her away from Hideki and into his own crushing hug.

"I wasn't done yet!" Hideki gasped, holding out his arms limply as if Akane could get out of Daichi's grip and come back to him.

"When did you get back?" Umeko asked bluntly.

"The, uh, day before yesterday. I was stuck in the hospital until last night," Akane answered.

"What happened? Nobody would tell us anything." Umeko took on that voice that meant she was internally panicking.

"I don't really want to talk about it," Akane said quietly.

Daichi loosened his hold on her.

"So," Moe said, turning to Umeko in a wild attempt to crack the tension, "How is your little brother?"

Akane eagerly seized the subject. "Brother?"

Umeko gave her a lazy smile and pulled a folded up picture from her pocket. "Yeah, he's only a few months old." She showed Akane a picture of a tiny baby with black hair and green eyes. "His name is Hiroto."

"Ah. I saw your mom at the hospital. She got back in shape really quickly."

"I think it has something to do with beating up your dad on a daily basis," Umeko admitted.

"Hey, is it true that my mom almost killed Lee-sensei?" Akane asked.

"Yeah," Daichi answered obediently, "I think she put him in the hospital for a week or two."

"Oh, he didn't mention that." Akane knitted her eyebrows together unconsciously.

"Umm, we were just going to get lunch," Moe said. "Do you want to join us?"

"No, my mom was making lunch for me when I left. I'll see you guys tomorrow." Akane ducked out of Daichi's hold and started walking backwards down the street.

"Or," Hideki said, "We could come over later?"

"That sounds good," Akane affirmed, far enough away that she was forced to turn around and watch where she was going.

"Where'd you go?" Tayuya asked as Akane closed the front door.

"I just wandered around the village a bit," Akane answered, sitting down at the table.

Tayuya set a bowl with fried rice and salmon in front of her.

"That Ryuu guys is leaving tomorrow. If you want to talk to him, you'll have to do it at the gate," Tayuya told her, sitting down across from her with a cup of tea and a plate.

"When?" Akane swallowed a piece of meat.

"About nine. His escort arrived this afternoon, and needed to get more supplies."

"Have you ever heard of the Village of Hearth?" Akane asked, remembering its absence on the list of active villages.

"I don't know where it is, but I met a few ninjas from there while I was traveling," Tayuya answered. "They were carrying the strangest weapons I've ever seen. And they were just as dark skinned as your friend."

"He's dark skinned?" Akane shrugged. "I thought that was just lots of grime."

"He's not the darkest I've seen, but he's pretty far up there. How long did it take you two to get here?" Tayuya asked innocently. Akane almost rolled her eyes.

"Just a few days. Maybe four," Akane answered anyway. She rinsed her bowl out and set it in the draining rack.

Akane took one of the pain pills and helped Tayuya clean up the kitchen.

She cleaned her room, replacing the sheets on her bed and dusting everything. The ceiling light and lamp on her desk both needed a bulb change and she had to get rid of her calendar. Akane vacuumed the floor and cleaned the cobwebs and dust bunnies out from behind everything.

There was knock on her bed room door. Umeko poked her head in.

"Hey, foxy-foxy, can I come in?"

Akane waved her in. "Is anyone else with you?"

"No, both Moe and Hideki had to meet with Kakashi for something. And Daichi got blackmailed by his mom into babysitting Hana." Umeko closed the door behind her. She smiled, adding a small joke, "I get you all to myself. At least, until they squirm their way out of the difficult situations."

Akane sat on her bed. "How is babysitting Hana a difficult situation?"

Umeko pulled out her desk chair. She grinned wider. "You have no idea how vicious my cousin has become."

"No," Akane ran her fingers over the brand on her arm unconsciously. Umeko's eyes were drawn to it then. "I don't."

Umeko made a small noise. "Must have been hard," She murmured.

Akane didn't know if Umeko meant for her to hear.

She looked down at the branded number: 186, which sort of looked like 981 at this angle. Akane looked back at Umeko.

"Let me tell you about it."

* * *

_Oh, my god. I realized why the last chapter (the one before this one) was so hard to write. It was because I'm used to writing from Akane's perspective. I could write from the view of any of her friends but I tried to do it from the perspective of a brand-new __**male**__ character that I made up off the top of my head. _

_Thank you for reading. _

_Damn, this only took me two days to write. _

_Bye, Sakiya._


	7. Restart

It was bright.

Too bright for so early in the morning. Akane pulled back her curtains. Sunlight glared off of the layer of snow coating everything. She yanked it back and looked at her clock. Six in the morning.

Akane groaned, throwing back her blankets. She had on flannel pajamas and a sweater and still needed a portable heater in her room. Akane pulled on a pair of socks before she stepped out into the hallway (her room was the only one with carpeting). The rest of the apartment was still, it being Naruto's day off and Tayuya wasn't usually up until eight.

Akane peeked into the master bedroom. It was surprisingly warm because of a large heater propped up against the wall. She glanced at the bed where Tayuya had a strong hold around Naruto's torso. Akane quietly picked up the handheld off the bed-side table and closed the door behind her.

She set it on the charger and went back to her room to get dressed for a few laps around the city.

There was a ton of things that Akane just plain didn't understand.

Such as why one leg gets goose bumps and the other one doesn't or why people affectionately name hurricanes.

Akane didn't understand why seventeen years and one kid into the relationship, her parents hadn't even been married. She didn't understand why people said she was the only thing that started the relationship when she was only fifteen years old.

Akane couldn't understand why some ninjas gave their lives for people they hated, killed loved ones for the people they work for, and risked it all just to help someone who didn't want or deserve it.

She couldn't understand why they hadn't been able to find her before.

But all of those things could be explained simply by asking someone who did understand quite well.

Unfortunately, it seemed that no one quite understood why Rock Lee ran chanting around the village in the early hours of the morning. And why he did so in three feet of snow wearing a tank top and open-toed zori would be never known.

"Good morning, Akane!" Lee greeted, slowing down a little bit to match her pace.

"Hello, Lee-sensei," Akane answered back. She glanced down at his feet. His toes were pink and the skin on his arms had gained a similar color.

Was he crazy?

"Why aren't you dressed properly for this weather?"

"Oh!" Lee-sensei puffed, "I wanted to increase my ability to withstand cold!"

"Oh."

Possibly crazy.

"I did not expect to see you up this early," Lee-sensei added on a separate note.

"I'm trying to get back into my old training routine," Akane answered. She pulled down the sides of her hat over her ears. "Why do you want to improve your cold threshold? Do you have a mission in the snow country soon?"

Lee-sensei grinned. "No, I realized my jumpsuit would not protect as well as other gear so I will work up my tolerance so I do not have to discard it for extremely cold missions!"

Akane nodded as if that piece of logic made perfect sense to her.

He was defiantly crazy.

"Hashimoto-san is leaving later on today, correct?"

"Who?" Akane looked at his face for clues.

"His given name is Ryuunosuke," Lee-sensei added.

"Oh, Ryuu-kun. Yeah, I'm going to talk to him at the gate when he leaves," She said.

"You two are on friendly terms?"

"Friendly enough," Akane shrugged. "I'm grateful because he got me out before it was too late."

Lee-sensei didn't answer, a hardened expression on his face. Finally, he said, "Or that he got you out at all."

Akane recognized the expression, but she didn't know who she'd seen it on before.

"I feel like I owe him for bringing me home without any questions," Akane admitted.

Akane stopped, hunching over to massage a stitch in her side. Lee-sensei kept going, a clear block away before she even had her breath back. Akane turned around and started back towards her home.

Tayuya had gotten up by the time she'd finished showering and the smell of fried eyes perfumed the apartment.

She dressed and went out into the kitchen.

"Good morning," She greeted Tayuya.

"I thought I heard someone up this morning," Tayuya muttered. She put a fried omelet on a plate and sat it in front of Akane. Tayuya sat down with a mug of completely black coffee, opened her mouth as if she wanted to say something but then closed it. "Ugh, I can't remember what it was that I was gonna say…"

"Is that the first cup of coffee you've had today?"

"Yeah," Tayuya looked up at the ceiling in apparent annoyance. "I'm trying to talk to my teenage daughter before I've even had my morning coffee. What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Drink, mom, drink. It'll come back to you," Akane promised, cutting her omelet up with the side of her fork.

Tayuya started eating her own omelet, washing it down with the strong looking coffee. She was half way through both when she found her train of thought.

"Oh, yeah, I was going to ask you what you wanted to do."

"Do with what?"

"Your job. Do you have anything specific in mind or are you just going to go along with the ranks normally?" Tayuya waved a fork around loosely. Akane wasn't surprised when it flew across the room and smacked into the cabinet.

"I was thinking about an internship at a place like the military police or somewhere that'll keep me close enough to the village," Akane answered, giving Tayuya her fork and getting up for a glass of juice.

"You should tell Naruto about that so he can get you an application tomorrow," Tayuya suggested.

At his name, Naruto stumbled through the archway in his boxers wiping the sleep from his eyes. "Wha? What about an application?"

"Could you get me one to the military police?"

"Yeah!" Naruto jolted forward, his head colliding haphazardly with the table top.

"Cold weather makes me _tired_."

"I can see that," Tayuya said, pulling an unrolled scroll out from under his head. He jerked up and fell into Akane's chair.

"But, I should warm – Warn!- you about the girl who usually oversees the interns. She's got, like, a serious case of hexakosioihexekontahexaphobia," Naruto mumbled.

Akane frowned at the unfamiliar word. "What does that even mean?"

"I don't know. I think it's a twenty-nine letter word that only means a fear of the number six hundred and sixty-six," Naruto answered, offering a blank smile to Tayuya when she set down his breakfast.

"Six-six-six," Akane repeated.

"Oh, I didn't know that Wakana was catholic," Tayuya said.

"Yeah, she is. I was a little surprised by that, but her parents are immigrants," Naruto said, shrugging.

The topic of religion never really came up that often. A majority of people weren't even religious, and automatically assumed everyone else wasn't either.

Akane knew that Umeko's and Moe's families both practiced Hindu, but that was about it.

"Eh," Naruto shrugged again, "To each his own."

He picked up his plate and put it in the sink before wandering back down the hall. Akane heard the master bed room door close.

"Ugh," Tayuya checked the clock above the stove, "I have to go. The restaurant is catering most of the food for the New Year Festival which means double overtime. Yay."

She pulled on a jacket over her sweater.

"The festival won't be for another week or so," Akane pointed out.

"We're just going to freeze everything," Tayuya said. She laced up her boots and waved at Akane before she closed the door behind her.

Akane looked at the clock as well.

It was almost time for Ryuunosuke to leave. Akane put on some shoes and started to head towards the gate. The streets and walkways had been cleared of snow and salt had been put down to stop it from icing over. The main street that ran through the village was already filled with people who were building stands and booths.

Akane ducked her way through.

She saw Ryuunosuke near the gate.

"Aka-chan!"

And he saw her, too, apparently.

"Hello, Ryuu-kun."

Ryuunosuke gave her a worried look over and knitted his eyebrows together. "Okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. How about you?" Akane asked.

Ryuunosuke shrugged his shoulders with a grunt. Typical of anyone of the Y chromosome.

"Get back safely, alright?"

A tall man yelled something to Ryuunosuke. Akane heard every syllable but she couldn't understand what he was saying. Ryuunosuke waved his hand absently at the man and nodded to Akane.

Akane glanced at the man. He had the same dark hair and skin as Ryuunosuke but his facial features were distinctly different. Maybe the Village of Hearth was somewhere with lots of sun?

"Come find me if you need anything," Akane added.

Ryuunosuke smiled. "Same for you."

He bowed to her, a movement which Akane mirrored, and turned back towards the gate. They closed the gate almost immediately after Ryuunosuke and the tall man had gotten through, but didn't go so far as to blot it.

Way to make someone feel good about coming back for a visit.

Akane glanced at her watch.

She should go find something productive to do.

Yeah, right.

Instead, Akane went back to her home.

Naruto wasn't there. However, he'd taken the liberty of piling all the dirty dishes in the sink instead of washing them. Akane poured liquid soap over the dishes and turned on the water.

She noticed a manila folder on the coffee table with an open can of coke sitting on it. The Hokage's seal was stamped on the front, meaning it had to do with a ninja. Akane moved the can and read the kanji written on the tab.

_Akane Uzimaki _

The fingers on one hand curled away while the other hand clamped onto the edge.

She flipped it open and examined the contents. Several medical forms had been stapled over the record of her last physical. The regular information (name, date of birth, serial number, height, weight, hair and eye color, ect) was written at the top of the form. Akane didn't see anything she didn't already know on the first page. The second page was a copy of her blood report. The third one was the mental examination she'd been given (you know, to make sure she hadn't contracted Stockholm's Syndrome or something).

The forth was a written report on the Sexual Abuse Examination, and the forth was-

Wait, Akane didn't remember having an S.A.E. kit taken. She flipped back to it and read the first column.

Akane heard dripping water and turned back towards the kitchen. The water had flowed over the top of the sink and was pouring over onto the floor. She dropped the file back down on to the table.

Akane quickly turned off the water, but lost her footing and fell backwards. She banged her elbow and hip upon crashing into the floor. Ouch.

Akane reached up and grabbed a dish towel off the table.

She had mopped up most of soapy water when Naruto came in, swinging a plastic minute mart bag in one hand and a stack of papers in the other. He laughed once but ceased the moment he saw the expression on her face. He put the bag on the counter and stepped over her.

Naruto plunged his hand into the sink and pulled out the plug.

He set it on the counter and grinned, not even attempting to help her up.

"I have to say you have a more fun way of doing the dishes than me."

Akane stood up and threw the damp towel at the general area of the counter. She missed.

Naruto showed her the stack of papers.

"I got you a buncha applications. Not just from the main department but all over the building," Naruto said, sounding very proud of himself.

He spread them out on the table.

Akane whipped her hands on her pants and picked up the closest one.

"I didn't really know what sort of thing you'd be interested in doing," Naruto added sheepishly.

"Some of these positions seem interesting enough," Akane replied.

She picked up the next one and read the title.

She needed a pen.

* * *

Hmmm, that took much longer than I expected. But I do know what to expect. Or what you guys need to expect. Two new characters (Love interests, the original one was Yoshiro, but I couldn't find a way to work him into the story) and a serious plot twist. Though that one probably won't happen for at least two more chapters.

I love the love this story has been getting (It's awsome for the selfestem) and the reviews. I knew I had to 'keep Lee crazy' for this one, hence the crazy. Am I even making sense? I just wanted to post this before I went to sleep.

Good night, enjoy, and enjoy.

Sakiya


	8. Call me daddio,I have a bodypart for you

Before I start this chapter, I'd like to ask a question.

Would anyone like to be a beta reader for this story (or me in general)?

(WARNING, LONG RANT, SKIP IF YOU'RE NOT INTERESTED AND ARE JUST HERE TO READ ABOUT MY CHARACTERS)

A beta reader is someone who reads something for the purpose of finding errors in the spelling or grammar (that just the basic definition I've been given). As you've probably noticed, I all but beg for reviews at the end of every post and I would love multiple readers to give me feedback before I even post.

I'll probably send you a rough draft of the chapter and honestly be about several times more open to ideas you have (I will say this once, Itachi is _dead_, and even if he did have spawn before he died, then they'd be at least three years older than Akane and her friends.). I don't think I could send drafts to more than three people, but if more people than that want it then I don't mind that much.

I won't answer to comments, just PMs. I'll personally send you details if ya say yes.

Without further stalling for time,

* * *

Akane watched a firework streak up into the sky and burst into a flower-thingy of sparks followed by a deafening boom. Moe squeaked and covered her ears with her hands.

"You're getting honey in your hair," Akane pointed out. Moe pulled the dumplings-on-a-stick away from her head, meeting slight resistance.

"That one was really loud," Moe said. She looked around, "Where'd Umeko go?"

"She and Naoki went off to find Kurenai's kid," Hideki said. Akane saw him steal a dumpling when Moe looked over her shoulder.

"I thought he was on a mission."

"Saru? No, he hasn't left the village in a few months," Hideki answered.

"I meant Naoki," Moe said, giving Hideki a stricken look.

Hideki gave Moe a leering smile and threw his elbow into her ribs. Moe toppled over, knocking over another person on her way down. Akane helped the pedestrian up and apologized.

Moe had gotten up on her own and was dusting off the seat of her kimono. She gave Hideki an annoyed look, but her gaze shifted to her dumplings, which were half covered with dirt and pebbles.

Moe whimpered.

Akane knocked it from her hand, and wrapped her arms around the crook of Moe's elbow. "Let's go get you some more."

Moe went with Akane willingly, not making anymore sounds. Hideki drifted in the opposite direction, towards a group of people she didn't recognize.

She instead focused on what Moe was mumbling.

It was completely incoherent except for a few choice words: Naoki, mad, and gay.

Akane didn't really want to know.

There was a line at the stand with the best dumplings. Akane would have headed past it but Moe pulled her into the line, digging in her obi for her miniature purse.

"Umeko told me you're starting an internship," Moe started casually.

"Yeah," Akane nodded as they scooted up the line, "I'm just going to be cataloging."

"Cataloging what?"

"Files, evidence, weapons, body parts, the works," Akane answered.

"Sounds interesting?" Moe knitted her eyebrows together. Akane knew for a fact that there was now a jounin vest hanging somewhere in Moe's closet.

Akane shrugged her shoulders. "What's gon'na kill me is the filing. Dead stuff doesn't bother me as much as it should. Organizing pictures and files to go together is going to be murder."

They paid for their dumplings and started towards the middle of the street where their parents tended to group.

"What do you think will happen? Like you might screw up a case?" Moe wiped the honey off of her face with her kimono sleeve.

Akane gave her a dead serious look.

"Don't jinx me."

!&

"Hey, Akane!" The girl behind the counter, Aiko, called, "Come here for a second."

Akane heaved the box of folders up onto the counter.

Aiko barley registered the box. "Will you take something down to the morgue for me?"

"A file?" Akane heard the pleading in her voice, but really didn't care.

"No, silly," Aiko smiled, reaching beneath the counter and pulling out a large, glazed over bag with about two inches of blood in the bottom and something long and misshapen reaching all the way to the seal.

Akane blinked rapidly and pointed her pinky at the bag.

"What is that?"

"A human arm." This chick was completely unfazed with sliding a bloody appendage in a bag across the counter to a fifteen year old girl. "It matches the skin tone of a torso and head and other body parts we recently found, but the mortuary attendant will need to examine it to verify."

"Oh," Akane said, "I just came back from the morgue to give these files to the person in office 265. Can you watch it until I come back from that?"

The girl gave her a rather glassy look, smiled, and nodded.

Akane pulled the box down, almost staggering under the weight, and went down the hall to the room with the numbers 265 fastened to the door. It had a large window, which was completely blocked with shades and what looked like a bookcase. She balanced the box on her knee and twisted the handle.

The door opened immediately.

"Oh, hey, Akane."

Naoki's uncle was in here. He turned away from the table he'd been standing at.

"Good morning, Kiba-san," Akane greeted, sliding the box up onto the table. "Here are the mortuary reports you asked for."

"All of these are similar to the case we've got now?" Kiba asked himself.

"I guess so," Akane answered anyway. "You've probably got a serial killer."

"How's your second week of work?" Kiba blandly changed the subject.

"I haven't really been cataloging," Akane said.

"What have you been doing?"

"Being the messenger girl," Akane answered, "Speaking of which, I have to go take a severed arm down to the morgue."

Kiba made a disgruntled face and started unloading the folders onto the table.

Akane left, seizing the arm off the counter and headed in the opposite direction. Maybe dead body parts bothered her more than she thought they would.

Akane pushed open the swing doors of the morgue and stepped in.

It was freezing, as usual.

"Hello, Akane," Dr. Uneo, the eccentric old morgue attendant, greeted. He was stitching up the chest of a middle aged man. "Did you deliver the files?"

"Yeah. Listen, I got'ta arm in a bag," Akane said, holding up the mentioned item.

"Ooooh!" Dr. Uneo breathed, clearly excited. He snipped the end of the thread and pushed the drawer the body was on back into its freezer. Dr. Uneo slammed the door shut and hurried over, holding out his hands.

Akane gave it to him. She backed towards the door. "I'll be in the evidence locker if you need me-"

"I need you to take the report back up to Kiba! Do you mind waiting?" He fixed large orange eyes on Akane.

She rolled her own and stood by the door.

Dr. Uneo removed the arm from the bag.

He laid it out on the counter and examined it for a few moments.

"Would you go tell Kiba that there's another victim?" Dr. Uneo asked her over his shoulder.

"He's going to want to know how you know this," Akane pointed out.

"I doubt Miss Pieces in there," He pointed his thumb at the freezer closest to him, "had another right arm that happens to be male."

Akane turned back to the door immediately.

"Akane?" Kiba barely asked before Akane interrupted him.

"TheresanothervictimitsamanyoushouldexpandyoursearcIhavefilestocatalogbye," She hurried through the sentence and back out the door before he could ask anything.

"Hey, there you are," Her new work buddy, Osamu Inuzuka, said when she closed the door to the evidence locker. She heaved a box up onto the table and pulled one of the thick files out.

Osamu grinned in a fashion she was used to seeing on Naoki.

"Welcome to work."

"Thanks, I guess," Akane said, almost flinching when she flipped through the pictures paperclipped to the report. Several of them were of the same woman with bruises all over her face.

"Yeah, thanks," Akane repeated.

It didn't snow on her birthday like she expected.

She did get gifts, though, from people she didn't expect them from.

Especially Saru Yuhi, who she hadn't spoken to since her eighth birthday where he dropped a plastic box of barrettes into her hand, promptly stuck his thumb in her eye, and told her to 'stop looking so mean'. Then he left his mom to apologize.

He didn't really get points for originality. But she did give him points for not poking her in the eye.

Most of the gifts were jewelry and accessories that Akane knew she wouldn't really be able to wear. She still accepted, though.

And, due to a schedule rotation, she was stuck on the graveyard shift on her birthday. And she was starving.

All of the floors of the station were constantly buzzing, and she was sure it was going to cause her to develop a facial twitch.

Akane had only managed to remain conscious by a continuous supply of energy drinks from the soda machine, but she ran out of coins very quickly. According to Osamu, the break room had a pretty good coffee machine.

She put on a pot to brew, sat at the table, and opened one of the files she'd brought along with her. She poured herself a cup when the coffee maker beeped.

"Who's brewing coffee?"

A group of field workers, smelling very ripe, I might add, flowed through the door, about three of them immediately going for the half full pot of coffee.

Akane absently raised one hand about ear level, still reading the file. She moved on to the next. And the mind-numbing buzz started again.

"How about you, newbie?"

Akane snapped to attention. "Huh? What?"

She focused on the woman who had spoken to her.

"Do you want to go take notes for a field job?"

Akane looked down at the file. Her stomach rumbled.

"Are there any good diners on the way?"

The woman smiled.


	9. What I know

* * *

The whole warehouse smelled like decomposing flesh.

Akane wrinkled her nose. If you added a tint of bleach it would have been just like one of the cells she used to be kept in.

Akane felt the freshly eaten food church erratically in her stomach. The lamp over her head flickered to life.

"Finally," The woman, Mitsu, said, throwing one hand up.

Akane focused on scribbling down what Toko Setsu was say about the body lying in a twisted mess on the floor. It was a young man on his back.

"Several cracks and breaks in the bones, removal of the hands and wrists, contusions, bruising, especially around the ankles, and a shattered skull-" Setsu-san listed off in an even, calm voice. He peeled back one eyelid and forced open the mouth. "The tongue removal along with other previous trauma suggest chronic abuse, but there are not any evidence of such acts in the other parts of the building-"

"He fell," Akane broke in.

"He was being tortured up there," Akane added, pointing her pen at the gapping hole in the level sixty feet above their heads. It looked considerably new compared to the rest of the warehouse, being supported with un-rusted iron girders.

Mitsu shined her hand light up at it. She twisted the knob and the beam of light brightened drastically. Oh, it was the setting where if you held it close to your skin, it'd actually start to give you a suntan.

"Pan out," Mitsu called, "Find a way up there!"

The crowd around the body broke up.

"Why do you think he was being tortured?" Setsu-san asked without looking at her.

"His tongue was removed so he couldn't scream, or if he was discovered, he wouldn't be able to say who did it to him. He was probably hung by his ankles or his wrists," Akane added, shrugging, "Look for chains or ropes up on the level."

Mitsu turned to her. "You have to be the creepiest, normal-seeming teenager I've ever met."

"Have you ever met Gaara-san's kids?" Akane teased lightly.

"They have a reason to be creepy," Mitsu said.

Akane shrugged her shoulders again. "So do I." She turned back to Setsu-san, pen poised over the notebook she'd been given. "Anything else notable about the body?"

"Yes, there is a light decomposition, probably due to moist conditions. That's all until we get the body in the morgue. Tell Kyo to photograph the body some more and then let Dr. Uneo's assistants take it," Setsu-san finished; he took the notebook from Akane and zipped it up into his bag.

"You can go back to the station," He said to Akane, putting the strap of the bag over his shoulder. "I'm going to take a look up there."

Setsu-san crouched down onto his haunches and leapt very high up; he grazed the far side of the hole, grabbing hold of the bricking at the last second. He swung himself up through the hole and out of sight.

Mitsu rolled her eyes in an unimpressed manner. "Show off."

"I think my dad once tried to do something like that," Akane said.

Akane's wrist watch beeped loudly. She checked it.

Graveyard shift was officially over. Kyo gave her a ride back to the station.

Akane had barely gotten halfway through the lobby when she was intercepted by Maoto Nara, the sketch artist.

"Oh, Miss Uzimaki," he blocked her path with his thick frame, "I was wondering when you wanted to come in for our session."

"I didn't know I had to make an appointment," Akane answered. She glanced around him at the door.

"Well, I do not have to do anything for about an hour," Maoto said, "Are you alright with a session right now?"

"Okay?"

She _almost_ made it out.

He sat her down at the table in one of the interrogation rooms. It was the one closest to the locker room. He gave her a cup of water, and put the trash can next to himself. Maoto ripped a sheet of sketch paper (which was covered with an odd looking doodle) off his pad and dropped it in the can.

He drew an oval and scratched a few lines where the eyes, nose, mouth, and ears were on the average face; Maoto balanced the pad in his lap and focused on her.

Akane wrinkled her nose again. He smelled salty, like desert sand. Maoto was probably just back from a trip to Suna with his mother.

"Whose face do you want to do first?" He asked, unusually light sounding. "Can you remember the faces of the men who attacked you on your mission?"

"Mission," Akane repeated. She thought for a moment and knitted her eyebrows together. "My last one? Kurosawa-san died…right?"

Maoto looked troubled at her statement. "But you said you could describe your attackers."

"Attack_er_. The only one I remember because he was the only one I saw when I was awake," Akane corrected.

"Alright. You saw his face directly?"

"Millions of times, but Sakura-san thinks I'm blocking it out of…out of-" Akane trailed off, forgetting the word Umeko's mother had used.

"Trauma?" Maoto provided. Akane nodded. "Do you want to try a remembering trick we sometimes use?"

"Uhh, sure," Akane answered. She noticed he spoke in the same proper way as Lee-sensei. Maoto put the pad back on the table and straightened up in his chair.

"Close your eyes."

Akane complied. She hunched over and pressed her palms over her eyes.

"I want you to picture a moment leading up to an attack, not the attack itself, of course, where you saw his face clearly," Maoto said, speaking very softly.

'Right now."

_In her minds eye, she simply glanced around. It was blurry, but she made out frozen meat hanging on hooks. She was in the meat locker again; this time, her feet touched the ground but her wrists were chained above her head. _

_Akane looked over her shoulder at the black concrete wall behind her. She was in a different position this time. There was a table nearby. She tried to get one foot up on it. _

_She took it off when she heard the door slam. _

_The white-haired man's footsteps were far quieter than she expected them to be. He came around one of the hunks of meat carrying a tray covered with a cloth and a box. _

_The man put the box and the tray down on the table, pulling the cloth off and draping it over his shoulder. She focused on the array of knives and strange metal implements she didn't recognize. _

_Akane looked at the box when he opened it. There were several miniature bottles inside along with a set of syringes. She couldn't read any of the labels on the bottles. _

_He filled one syringe with a clear liquid and went to pull down her sleeve. _

_The needle bit into her skin. Akane could feel her heartbeat slow down suddenly and she looked back at the tray. The man picked up one of the metal tools. _

_Her gaze shifted up to his face and he smiled…_

Akane lurched over the side of the table and vomited into the trash can. Her stomach continued to heave after it was empty.

"Are you alright? Were you feeling sick before?" Maoto questioned, leaning over the table and grabbed her shoulder. Akane flinched away from him and sat back up, whipping her sleeve across her mouth, breathing heavily.

"No, it just came unblocked," She grunted.

"Your throat?"

Akane almost glared at him.

"Oh, right, are you ready for this or do you want to wait?" Maoto looked ready to call Dr. Uneo and flee.

"No, it's better to just get it over with," Akane answered.

"Alright, tell me if you want to stop." Maoto picked his pad back up while Akane sipped on the water.

* * *

"His nose is just a little bit narrower than that," Akane said, pointing at the page.

"Like my nose or Kiba's nose?" Maoto fished for a response.

"Like Neji-san's nose," Akane replied.

Maoto scraped his eraser over the drawing and redrew the nose. He showed her the finished picture.

"Is it right?" Maoto asked.

Akane swallowed thickly. "Perfect."

"Alright." Maoto closed the pad and shoved it into his bag. He looked at the clock behind Akane. "Do you need a ride?"

Akane looked at her wrist watch. "No, I'll be fine. The sun should be coming up about now."

Maoto gave her an uneasy smile, threw the bag over his shoulder, and left.

Akane picked up her bag and followed suit.

That episode ended with stomach medicine, a shower, and two sleeping pills. _Fantastic_ birthday.

* * *

"Morgue files 're pilling up, huh?" Osamu stated casually. He was trying so hard to be casual it was painful to be around. Akane dropped the box onto the table. He moved a stack of files to the other side of the table.

"That's because the serial is getting more buzzed off the more he kills," Akane replied. She piled the folders on the table in order by date. "We're going to need a new filing cabinet."

"He isn't even bothering to spread the parts out more than a few streets apart," Osamu added. He smiled. "Have you figured it out yet?"

"Figured out what?" Akane asked, absentmindedly. She saw him grin doggishly out of the corner of her eye.

"What the serial is doing," Osamu answered, pulling a file off the top of the pile and flipping it open.

"And how would you know?" Akane asked.

"It's what I think he's doing. Hey, don't disrespect the sense!" He added when Akane snickered. "I think he's a…terrorist!"

Akane giggled. Osamu glowered at her. She brought the folder up to cover her mouth and waved one hand for him to continue.

"His victims have been getting higher ranked! I mean, if you wanted to destroy a capitol, wouldn't you want to get rid of the people who are most likely to be able to stop you first?" Osamu asked seriously. "If you wanted to take a nation down, would you rather attack the soldiers or the men comanding them?

She nodded. "That sounds about right." Akane opened the folder and started reading.

She closed it and dropped it in the pile next to Osamu. "What else do you think?"

"Some of the victims were from Suna, and the ones highest up have been showing signs of torture, _and_ all of them have had internal damage, like the kind you get from a Hyuuga! Someone is conspiring!" Osamu waved both hands over his head in a comical way to exaggerate.

"You could smell a conspiracy at an eight-year-olds rice ball stand," Akane retorted. She moved on to the most recent file in the group.

Osamu kept both hands hovering over his head, pointing both index fingers at her. "Stop flirting with me. Flattery gets you no where."

"You started this by flirting," Akane rolled her eyes and changed the subject, "How has your brother been? I haven't seen him since before the festival." Akane opened the file and looked at the papers.

"He went on a mission to Sound country." Osamu shrugged, dropping his hands. "He was supposed to get back a week ago. He might be back for all I know."

Akane didn't answer. She just snapped the file shut, muttered something similar to an excuse, and hurried out the door. Akane didn't really stop her scatterbrained fleeing until she was outside of Kiba's office.

She ran squarely into the Dog-man himself and was knocked back.

"Mini-Tayuya!" Kiba said, surprised. He offered her his clawed hand and lifted her easily up off the floor when she took it. "Are you going to visit your mom?"

"What's wrong with my mom?"

"Naruto said she was visiting Tsunade up stairs about something. Where are you going?" He asked when Akane ducked under his arm.

"To visit Dad," She called back over her shoulder.

* * *

"Hey, dad, I have a question."

Naruto finished shoving a miniature doughnut into his mouth and held one finger up. He swallowed and said, "Your mom's pregnant."

"Oh, that's great," Akane replied. "Anyway, how many Suna shinobis have to be killed before the Kazekage comes to check it out?"

"Quite a few. Why?"

"Most of the victims lately have been from or had ties to Suna. Ah, you know what?' Akane waved her hand dismissively. "Never mind. How far along is mom?"

"Not that far," He stopped and muttered, "Where's my stapler? I could have sworn I had one down here with my explosives…"

"But what I do know is that we need to consider names early this time. We didn't even have a name for you until you were three weeks old," Naruto said. "We didn't know your sex and we started fighting over what to call you. I hope that doesn't happen again."

Akane nodded. "It probably will."

* * *

"_Kaede_?!" Naruto asked incredulously, licking his spoon. "Why did you decide on that name? What if it's a boy?"

"Kaede is a unisex name," Tayuya answered.

"What? What is unisex? A freaky sex blend?"

"No, dad, it means the name is appropriate for both a girl and a boy. Is there anymore ice-cream?"

Tayuya tilted her bowl towards Akane. "Only what I have. Want some?"

Akane had watched Tayuya pour an entire jar of salsa over the moose tracks ice-cream in her bowl fifteen minutes ago.

"I'll pass."

* * *

"Hey, Akane," Osamu greeted. He stuck out his left hand, which had a blue post-it stuck to the knuckles. "This Setsu guy wants to talk to you."

Akane stood from her chair. Osamu waved his fist in her face. "Take the note," He told her.

Akane pulled it off and Osamu pushed her out into the hallway, closing the door behind her. She looked at the note.

"_Second floor, hallway C, room 344_" was scrawled across it in neat, thin handwriting.

She crumpled it up and shoved it into her pocket, heading towards the stairwell.


	10. Irritation at it's best

Akane found the office easily.

"Come in!" Setsu-san called when she rapped her knuckles against the door. Akane slipped in and shut the door. Setsu pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk. Akane sat down. It felt like someone had cut up a swatch of the carpet and stitched it to the seat.

"So," Setsu-san started, "Akane. I called you up here because I wanted to ask you about something."

She noticed papers scattered out on his desk. "What is it?"

"Well, your friend Ryuunosuke Hashimoto so kindly gave us the coordinates of the building where he found you, but we haven't been able to get close enough to it. We can't exactly send a whole army in there without calling war and they honestly haven't been targeting Konahona or Suna shinobis."

"So? What kind of help can I possibly give you?" Akane asked. Setsu-san coughed.

"They have, however, been targeting shinobis from our other ally villages and we have a feeling they might try to come after more like you," Setsu-san said.

"Like me?"

"Young nins who are more influenced," Setsu-san answered. "I know this may be hard, and you can say no, but I want to send an infiltration team in there and we could really use someone who's been there before-"

"I don't take out-of-country missions anymore," Akane interrupted. "I'm sorry, but I don't want to risk it."

Setsu-san looked disappointed but gave her a professional smile and said, "Alright." He scrawled a number on the back of a pamphlet and leaned over the desk. "We leave in two weeks. Contact me if you change your mind."

"How could he expect you to want to _do_ that?" Umeko asked around her spoon.

"And, you've only been back for a couple of months. Why would he send you there?" Hideki added.

"Do you want more tea?" The waitress asked. Akane nodded to her and she refilled her mug.

"I could see how he needs me, but it's a little bit too soon, don't you think?" She dropped a few sugar cubes into the cup and stirred.

"I think you should go," Daichi said. Umeko glowered at him and Akane was sure Hideki kicked him under the table. "Ow! Ah, I mean, what about the other prisoners?"

"But-"

"I was asked to go, too," Daichi said. This surprised Akane.

"You don't have to," Akane instantly replied.

"I want to. It's a good opportunity."

"No, it's not," Umeko said.

"I guess not in the way you think," Daichi shrugged. He dug a few bills out of his pocket and dropped them into the center of the table. He pulled on his coat. "Everything will be alright. Promise."

Umeko waited until he had left before she said, "I didn't expect that."

"Me, neither," Hideki answered. "But that is exactly like him."

For some reason, he chose that moment to grind his palm into her scalp. Akane jerked back at the same time as he pulled back his hand and cradled it.

"Ow! What do you have in your hair?! Knives?" Hideki complained, showing her his bloodied palm.

"My horns are growing," Akane said simply.

"_HORNS_?! I didn't even know you _had_ horns!" He nearly yelled. Hideki pressed his napkin to his palm, ignoring the complaints of the people at the next table.

"Be quiet," Umeko told him, "Haven't you ever seen Akane's mom?"

"Yeah, but she doesn't have horns!"

"She does in the earliest picture in her file."

"I've always had horns; they just haven't been more than little stubs." Akane parted the hair at the left side of the crown of her head to show him the grey growth.

"How big do you think they'll get?" Hideki put one finger against the top of the horn and added, "Can you feel that?"

Akane shook her head. "I don't know."

"I could always file them off for you," Umeko said.

"They're fine. I just can't wear any hats for a while and it's getting warmer anyway."

"Try drought-like. It hasn't snowed at all." Hideki complained. "I want water!"

"Oh, here!" The waitress set down a glass of water immediately. Umeko giggled as the waitress hurried off. Hideki picked the glass off of his plate and set it to the side.

"She got my cookies moist," He grumbled.

"Hehehe, oh, wait! No, I'm late!" Umeko moaned and yanked her coat off the back of her chair. She dropped several bills on top of the ones Daichi left.

"Oh, here you go, miss," a waiter said, putting down a slice of pie on a plate. "Sorry it took so long to bake. Nobody ever orders vanilla and mocha."

Akane offered a smile and started eating. She checked her watch. Her lunch hour still had about twenty minutes left in it.

"I thought you liked fruit. Their blueberry pie is good," Hideki pointed out. Akane shook her head.

"I don't like my fruit cooked," she said. Hideki pulled out his wallet and dug out some money.

"I have to go," he zipped up his jacket and slung his bag over his shoulder, "You know, people to interrogate, guys to flirt with, all that jazz."

He waved a farewell and Akane returned it. She finished her dessert and took the money up to the front.

The sun gleamed outside, but offered no warmth. Akane buried her hands into her pockets and started back towards the station. An academy student ran in front of her and swung his leg at a kick ball, but only succeeded in sending it rebounding against a newspaper stand and over her head.

"Hey!" Naoki called. "You almost hit Little Red Riding Hood!"

The kid scooped up his ball and fled. Aoi skidded around Akane and stood on his hind legs to put his paws on her shoulders. She patted his head and tried to brush the mud off her jacket. Naoki pulled Aoi back by the collar.

"'Little Red Riding Hood'?" Akane asked, incredulously. Naoki pulled on the tail of her jacket, which was bright red. "Oh, I see, but wasn't hers a cloak or something?"

Naoki shrugged noncommittally.

"Are you going on that mission?" He asked.

"Did Daichi tell you about it?" Akane dodged the question.

"No, I'm actually going on it," Naoki replied. Akane cocked her eyebrows. "Well," he answered, "They're gonna need a medic."

"Daichi _is_ a medic," Akane said.

"More than one medic is good in case one gets killed," Naoki shrugged, "Besides, I'd feel nervous if you came."

"Who said I'm not coming?" Akane asked, pretending to be indignant.

"Daichi may or may not have mentioned it earlier."

"I just told him!"

"That's just you guys. A real shinobi knows how to gather information discretely."

Akane threw her foot in front of his and managed to send him face-first into the cold dirt. Naoki sputtered and jumped back up. He glowered at her, a look which Akane mirrored, and spat dirt out of his mouth. He whipped the grime off of his face.

Aoi barked.

"You were evesdropping on us?" She hit him without waiting for an answer.

"No, not on you. Did you know Daichi talks to himself? Dangerous habit, you know." He gave a nervous laugh. Akane scowled at him.

"Anyway, I'd feel nervous 'cause you kind of slip my radar, see? Way back, I couldn't tell that you weren't in the area 'cause I couldn't tell you was in it in the first place," Naoki explained.

"We should work on that, buddy," Akane tried to joke. Naoki didn't smile.

"Did…you leave anyone behind?" He asked.

"What?" He wasn't making any more sense.

"You were there…for years. Did you make any friends?" Naoki refused to look back at her.

"Well, I made two friends. Twins, ya know. One died before I got out," Akane answered.

"And the other one?"

"She didn't even know her own name, so I doubt they did anything that horrible to her," Akane said. She shrugged and avoided a gutter. "She was nice but I think she might have developed Stockholm's Syndrome."

"Do you have that same kind of indifference to everyone you meet?" Naoki quipped.

"I need to have emotional restraints," Akane answered.

"Why?"

"Don't know. I just know getting emotionally involved with everybody the second I meet them is the worst way to go. It's done me good."

"How could being emotionally constipated do you _any_ good?!" Naoki demanded stubbornly.

"I have to go to work," Akane said.

"Okay, fine. Just do me a favor," Naoki said, "Remind me to do something when I get back from the mission 'cause I know I'm going to forget."

"Alright, what?"

"Remind me to talk to Umeko. She's been acting weird and not showing up for night shift."

Naoki called Aoi and turned onto a side street. She checked her watch again. Fifteen minutes gone. Akane really wished it was a few years ago when her conversations with Naoki usually only had about five words at the most.

Osamu wasn't there when she got back. He only had this job until the end of the week, and then would begin an internship in interrogation/torture with that guy who hid his scars under a bandanna. By now, the serial killer had turned into a mass murderer, with an entire filing cabinet full of morgue and field reports.

A few officers had suggested looking into any shinobi, Konahona citizen or not, with abilities related to damaging the interior of the body. Like medical ninjas.

But the subject dropped dead when the Hyuuga clan was mentioned. Everybody thought about it, but that particular clan had been pulling strings all throughout the village since it was first settled.

"There's no doubt about it!" Osamu shouted. He sounded almost exactly like Naoki, which irritated Akane now.

"About what?"

"I listened in on a council meeting. There's no doubt that, whenever they catch this bastard," Osamu waved his hand at the filing cabinet, "He's being executed, no questions asked."

"I guess that makes since. Unless they want to use him to get to his boss or organization," Akane pointed out.

"Organization?"

"_If_ he's just a lackey, which he will be. _They _**know** he's a lackey, that's why they haven't given him a press title, like 'The South-Side Butcher'," Akane said. Osamu stared at her for a moment, and then let an enormous smile break out over his face.

"Who's the conspiracy-theorist now?" He teased, sounding pleased.

"Ahh. You're rubbing off on me!"

"Is it really a bad thing?"

"I don't have any reason to distrust my village," she answered.

"Really? What about that Uchiha thing where they made him kill his entire family under wraps?"

Akane never heard about that. Her father may have mentioned it a few times, but she figured it was one of those things Osamu dug up reading council files all the time. Because she hadn't responded, he must have thought he won. He looked happy.

Too happy.

"Hey, would you mind taking the files down to the conference room for me? Kiba's supossed to be holding a discussion," Akane added.

"All of those files?" He asked. "One drawer at a time?"

"Oh, it'd probably be faster if you take the entire cabinet."

Osamu pouted, eyeing the thing. "This is how you treat people you like?" Akane shrugged. "Well," he added, "you could at least offer to help."

"Can't. I have to run errands," Akane answered.

He ignored her advice and pulled the top two drawers out. Leaving, he grumbled, "I'd like to see how you'd treat someone you hated."

Akane swallowed rather thickly.

Who did she hate?

Akane swiped the files off the table and went to deliver them.

She dug the crumpled up pamphlet out of her trash when she got home, flattened it out on her desk, and got the hand-held phone. Akane dialed the number.

Setsu-san answered after the second ring.

"Hi, Setsu-san, uhm, are there any spots left on the team?"

Akane could practically hear the smile on his face when he said, "Of course, Miss Uzimaki."

#&()+)(&

_You know what's weird, I'm about four chapters ahead of this in my mind. __**And**__, I figured out a way to force Yoshio (kicking and screaming) back into a 'love-interest' slot. _

_I **LOVE** YOU GUYS (It's true). _

_Sakiya _

_P.S. I posted a link on my page to a picture of Akane. (What she looks like in my mind, anyway. I did draw it, so excuse any mistakes. And her horns look crappy…)_


	11. gearing up

A certain disease had been rearing it's repulsive, scaly head in most parts of the world, especially in villages in The Fire Country with low doctor count. And, because a few of the checkpoints Ryuunosuke listed (as in "these are how you know you aren't dumb-fuck lost") fit this description, Akane was waiting to be vaccinated.

They needed her blood type to figure out which types of the disease she was most vulnerable to.

She wasn't exactly the type of person who could just stare as the needle sunk into her skin, watch the tube fill with blood, and cheerfully tell the nurse to have a nice day, and if they needed her, she would be in the cafeteria. No. If they didn't get the needle in properly the first time, she'd probably end up taking a linoleum nap.

The nurse did get it right, keeping Akane distracted with a ranting, unlikely tale about the second Hokage.

Akane left the clinic with eight band-aides up her left arm. Oh, yes, O negative is extremely vulnerable.

The sun beat down harshly, soaking Akane's shirt in sweat in less than five minutes.

She shielded her eyes with her arm and fished a folded up piece of notebook paper out of her pocket. Setsu-san had given her a list of things she was required to do before the mission, such as learning the same sign language system as the rest of the team, research their abilities and weaknesses, and place an order for money for the surrounding countries. Akane had been adding things that she personally needed to do, like, getting vaccinated, asking Iruka-san for trap-making techniques, and having Tenten set her Bo with steel plating so it wouldn't smash again.

With less than a week to go, it was becoming a little frantic and flustered. There were people who were flat out making up reasons or trying to trick her into making a commitment that would require her not to go. And then, there were people, like her ever-pleasant mom, who'd become increasingly passive-aggressive. (She had to re-sharpen four rolls of wire and rewash and repair most of her winter clothing…) Lee-sensei, of all people, had given up and offered to take a spot on the team as well. Akane would honestly have liked having her teacher on a mission back to the building where she was tortured and experimented on for two years.

But, as Setsu-san was not planning an attack, Lee-sensei's abilities were not needed. He did go so far as to put Lee-sensei on the search party, though. So, if for some reason the team missed two check-ins consecutively, or sent out a distress signal, then the search party would come out looking.

Akane absently smoothed her hair away from her face, veering to the left side of the street where a row of tall trees offered shade.

She didn't need to pick up her Bo from Tenten until four and the girl at the equipment shop firmly told her that her weighted gloves would be finished by five.

So, an hour to kill.

Akane found a shady place to sit and dumped her backpack on the ground.

The grass was brown and scratchy. She folded her legs under her and looked at the list again.

Akane crossed out 'get vaccinated' off the list. She'd managed to weasel a twenty foot net that would bring down a face off the monument if you put the right amount of chakra into it from Iruka and had five tabbed profiles on her desk at home. The Building of International Affairs hadn't given her a specific date as to when the money would be in, but it wouldn't hurt to check. She stood, shouldering her pack and started back north. The IA building was right next to the Hokage monument, usually being responsible of the safe-kept of foreign visitors and making sure everyone was legitimate.

The air conditioner of the building was cranked so high that, after about two minutes inside, Akane felt that she should have worn long sleeves.

She folded her arms on the front desk and caught the secretary's attention. "Um, I'm here to pick up a money order."

The secretary pressed her lips together for a few seconds before she said, "I'm going to need to see some identification."

Akane immediately slid her pack off her shoulders and unzipped the front pouch. She pulled out her laminated card and showed it to the secretary.

"Are you here to pick up the order from Setsu-sama?" The secretary asked.

"Uh, I didn't realize I put it in his name," Akane said.

"No, the money order's in your name. Setsu-sama put in a separate one. You have authorization to take it, too," The secretary told her.

Akane's mind wandered briefly back to her schedule. If she took it, she'd forget to give it to him until the day of the mission. She doubted he'd be happy about that.

"No. I'll just take the one in my name," Akane answered.

The secretary started tapping away at her keyboard. Without taking her eyes off the computer screen, she asked, "Is there a recruitment mission going on or what?"

"Huh?"

"The last time we had so many orders in at one time, they were going to recruit some ninjas."

"From where?" Akane asked.

"Don't know, really," The secretary replied. "They ordered money from all over the world, but were back in less than a week. Didn't see the group they brought in until they'd been conditioned and certified as leaf ninjas. I think Setsu-sama was one of them. Poor kid. Looked like an alien before he started dying his hair."

"How long ago was that?" Akane wondered aloud.

"About two years ago. They blend in well, don't they? Ah, here we go! Your order came in yesterday."

The secretary started shuffling through a basket of yellow envelopes by her computer. She pulled a thick one from the middle area and slid it across the counter to Akane. Akane stuffed it into her backpack.

She walked out, holding the door open for another woman coming through.

Akane closed the door behind her. She started for Tenten's weapon shop after checking her watch. Talking to the secretary had taken up a full thirty minutes, and the walk (very slow pace, mind you) took twenty minutes, so Akane only needed to wait for ten minutes for her Bo.

The Bo weighed an extra ten pounds when Tenten handed it over.

"Be careful when you're swinging that around," Tenten advised. "I textured the entire width for better grip, but that doesn't mean it won't go flying."

"Thanks," Akane dug her wallet from her backpack, "How much do I owe you?"

"One-fifty," Tenten answered.

Akane shifted out the right amount and gave it to Tenten.

"Good luck on your mission," Tenten offered.

"Thank you."

Akane propped the Bo against her shoulder and left. She went home and dropped off the weapon in her room. Naruto wasn't there, and she didn't see Tayuya anywhere. Akane knew her mother must be close to the house because of a pot boiling on the stove, producing one of the foulest, scariest scents she'd ever inhaled. Naruto once mentioned Tayuya's taste of scary, almost inedible foods during the last pregnancy. Akane picked up a spoon and stirred the thick, whitish-yellow liquid. There were a variety of meats and vegetables floating in it.

"Oh, hey, baby," Tayuya greeted, coming in from the back yard, "I didn't hear you get here."

"What is this?"

"Something I used to eat," Tayuya replied. She gathered a few spice jars from the cabinet and started to season it.

"When?" Akane asked, "Before people developed taste buds?"

"Nah!" Tayuya stirred the spices in and started shifting through the cabinet. "I ate it all the time when I first started my training. That smell's just the onions combining badly with the liver. It tastes good with bread."

Tayuya put a top on the pot and lowered the heat.

Akane lowered herself into a chair while Tayuya continued to bustle around the kitchen, finding places for the food she'd pulled out.

Her mother hadn't even begun to show, and somehow, almost everyone Akane had talked to had asked her to congratulate Tayuya for them. Even Mito Lye had asked her to. Akane was certain the old man was unable to tell Tayuya from Hinata-san, and asked him how he knew.

"My daughter-in-law's hair stylist heard from her gardener's great-niece. Which means everyone knows, sweetheart."

Tayuya set some tea on to boil and sat into the seat opposite Akane.

There was a moment of pause, followed by Tayuya asking, "How fast could you learn a new jutsu?"

"What type of jutsu?" Akane asked, slowly. Her mother's chakra system was disabled by a seal specially made by Neji-san. Tayuya couldn't access enough to make herself move quicker, much less power a jutsu.

"Ninjutsu," Tayuya said. "Just a simple one," Tayuya thought for a second and said, "Well, it's simple once you get it down. Like second nature."

"Okay, yeah, getting it down would take hours, or days," Akane said.

"Then lets get started," Tayuya said, standing up.

"But," Akane said, pointing at the clock, "my gear is almost ready."

Tayuya dragged Akane out of her chair by the particular hand that was pointing at the clock. "You can pick it up tomorrow, or the day after that. They won't throw out your stuff cause you weren't on time. I mean, you already paid."

"But-"

"No buts!"

- - - - - - -

Okay, so Akane didn't pick up here gear until a day and a half before the mission. The girl at the store even called their house and asked if she wanted it delivered. It was heavily air-conditioned in the front of the store. The floor was solid oak and the ceiling was wide paneled with fluorescent lights which, combined with the large glass windows at the front, gave it an airy look. The room was split in half by a long counter. Behind the counter were tables and shelves stacked with wrapped packages, and in front were benches and tables piled with catalogues.

There were five sets of armor framed on the far wall. Four of them were armors specially made for the first four Hokages and the final one was just a set of flexible, skintight body plates made to be worn under a kimono. The girl behind the counter, Yuki_, _Akane reminded herself, had told Akane the story to why they were so special, special enough to be framed alongside Hokage armor, but she forgot everything but the range of weapon it protected against.

"Hey, Uzimaki, I was wondering when you'd come," Yuki greeted, coming through the door to the back, carrying the scent of armor polish with her.

"My mother was beating a jutsu into my skull," Akane responded, dead pan.

Yuki smiled, displaying white teeth. She wiped a black smudge off her face with a rag and said, "It's lucky you didn't come. Your order was delayed for a bit."

"Delayed?" Akane asked.

"That's blacksmith talk for 'not finished yet'," Yuki admitted, scratching her chin, "I have to say, yours was a hard order on my side too. It took forever to find a good material to make the vest and leg pads. That has to be the first time that I was specifically asked not to use leather."

Yuki hauled a large package up off the closest table and pushed it up onto the counter.

"I don't like leather myself," Yuki started. She slapped a hand to her chest and said, "Vegan. But it's the easiest find for protective clothing."

"What'd you use?" Akane asked.

Yuki blinked, scratched her chin again, and said, "You know chain mail? I found this material like it, only lighter. The shirt Blais made is small enough to fit under a tunic, and is pretty resistant. I tried to use the most flexible metal I could for the shin guards and forearm plates, and I found this mineral cotton shirt and pants for you."

"Mineral cotton?"

"Like fortified cloth. It has metal flakes woven in with the cotton. Old ninja specialists used to wear them," Yuki told her. She scratched her chin again and said, "About the chain mail, I'd avoid arrows or kunai if I were you. That's the reason they stopped using it."

Akane nodded.

"You don't really talk that much, do you?" Yuki asked.

"Uh, no, not that much."

Yuki looked down at the thick package, embarrassed at bringing it up. Akane estimated about fifty gay babies were born in the awkward silence that followed. Finally, Yuki broke it open with a weak question.

"You really want to be prepared, huh?"

Akane pulled the package of the table and folded it under her arm. She offered a smile.

"For the worst."

_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_

Please forgive me for not being on for a few months.

I could offer twenty excuses (sports, homework, fifty friggin papers, ect.) but I won't go into details. Aye, you know you've been off too long when you get on and the whole account portion of the site makes you do a double take. Thanks for reading.

~Sakiya


	12. Missons

_Shove. Shake. _

"Wake up."

_Shove. _

"Wake up."

_Shake. _

"Come oooooon. Waaaake up."

_Shakeshakeshakeshake. _

Akane rolled drowsily to slap at the large hands shaking her at the hip and shoulder. Her bedside lamp flicked on. Akane shielded her eyes from the light and reached to turn it off.

"Time to get up," Naruto whispered.

Akane looked at the clock on the table. It was only one in the morning.

"Dad," Akane complained, "Are you crazy?"

"It's time to get up and reeeeady," Naruto told her. He shook her again for good measure.

"My team doesn't leave for two more hours," Akane said.

Naruto dragged her halfway out of bed by her wrists and flicked on another lamp. "I made breakfast, get up, take a shower, get up, you need to pack, geeeet up!"

Akane pulled her wrists free and flopped back onto the mattress. She shoved back the sheets and sat up, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Akane scooped a towel up off the floor and stood completely up. Naruto left the room, looking satisfied.

Akane followed him out into the hallway, only turning into the bathroom instead of into the kitchen.

The hot water had enough power to wake her up, partially because she forgot to turn on the cold water, too. Akane yelped, and jumped back. She leaned around the stream of searing hot water and twisted the knob marked with a blue sticker. She washed her hair and rubbed soaped on every part of her body that she could reach.

Akane shut off the water and stepped out. She brushed her teeth and her hair and splashed water into her face, rubbing her eyelids until it hurt to keep her eyes closed.

Akane returned to her room and dressed, dragging her bag from her room and dumping it on the couch. She ducked through the archway into the kitchen and sat down at the table. Naruto put a plate stacked with breakfast food goodies in front of her. Akane found the pepper shaker under a newspaper and started on the eggs. Naruto had his own plate. He poured Akane a glass of milk as they ate and downed the rest of the carton by himself.

There was the parent-child small talk, of course.

"I didn't think you could cook, dad," Akane said, taking a bite of the eggs.

"Your mom taught me. Did you fill out that form for-what was it?"

"Department change," Akane answered.

"Oh," Naruto said. "promotion."

"It's not a promotion. And field ranks are the only ones you can rise in before you come of age."

"Yeah, it is."

"No, it's not. The department's just across the hall, not even a pay raise."

"If people are gonna treat you better, it's a promotion."

"You talk to Tsunade, yet?"

"Yeah," Naruto grumbled, "She said to wait until after the council meeting next month."

"I heard about that. Gaara-san is coming, right?"

"Mhm, apparently, he's getting tired of the Sand shinobis being slaughtered here."

"So, the whole councils going to be there, too?"

"Yep."

"And representatives from other ally countries?"

"…Yeah."

Akane finished her toast and pushed her empty plate forward. "So, there's going to be a very large group of important people in the Hokage mansion in the midst of attacks on important people in this village?"

This particular question caught Naruto in the middle of a swig of orange juice and had extremely…unfortunate results. Naruto was left sputtering and Akane was left in need of a second shower. That cut the parent-child conversation short. By the time Akane had showered and dressed again, she had about twenty-five minutes to make it to the gate.

I'm actually going to stop the story in order to describe the clothing she got in the last chapter, to eliminate confusion on how a ninja can move in that kind of heavy, bulky shit. If you really don't want to know this and get back to the story, then skip the next paragraph or so.

Anyhow, first off, the chain-mail isn't like the knight's armor kind of chain-mail. Picture a sweater, only woven of strands of steel instead of yarn. It's extremely lightweight, similar to a cotton shirt, but does get heavy under some circumstances (such as when submerged under water, or simply wet). Second, the mineral shirt and pants are just that: A shirt and pants. They look normal, but some of the metal weave shows through (it looks like it's covered in glitter). Because the Bo Akane got is too heavy to carry in her hands, or separated in her pockets, it was fitted with a strap so she could wear in on her back or around her hips, like a sword. Finally, the arm plates and shin guards are pretty standard: extend from the joints (wrist to elbow, ankle to knee), made of grey, nondescript metal, and secured with straps.

This is the part where I hit _play_ on the universal remote.

The sun hadn't risen yet, but the temperature had already hit eighty. Akane thanked whoever was listening that her team would be deep in snow country by noon. There wasn't any foot traffic, being that anyone without insomnia was dead asleep right now. She made good time, reaching the gate about the same time as the other members of the team got there. Akane didn't know how though; she'd stored all her protective clothing in her bag and that, combined with her Bo, weighed a ton.

Naoki was there, looking disgruntled. Setsu was talking to a guard by the gate. Akane knew the other three members of the team, but by sight only. All three of them were at least four years older than her.

There was Li, no surname, absolutely no resemblance to her so-called brother. She had that careful emotionless behavior that Akane easily associated with former ROOT members. Li wore her brown hair cut short around her face so that the bangs hid her eyes. The woman was wearing long sleeves despite the heat and had two twelve inch bladed knives strapped to either thigh. Akane recognized the outline of a sword through her shirt.

Next was Masaru Hayashi. Standing at 6"7 and built like a house, Masaru looked fit for construction or metal working rather than being a shinobi. It was easy for Akane to imagine him as the giant from the fairytales that were preformed at the harvest festival. He rested an enormous hammer on his shoulder, but Akane could see that he, like Li, had knives hidden under his clothing. The voice he used to speak to Li with was gentle and soft, mismatched with his appearance.

Last was Saburou Kato. If Akane was ever to think of what a werewolf would look like halfway between wolf and man, Saburou would fit the bill perfectly. He had an elbow length mane of wild grayish-brown hair and yellow eyes. Though, the whole scary-guy look was completely ruined the second he smiled. Akane couldn't see a single weapon on him.

Akane stopped, furrowing her eyebrows and glancing around the area, illuminated by a street lamp.

"Where's Aoi?" She asked Naoki.

"Back at my house," Naoki answered.

Daichi took this chance to materialize out of nowhere with a bag of chips in his hand. He swallowed the chips that had been in his mouth and asked, "Am I late?"

Naoki and Akane responded, "No" at same time. Daichi tilted head to the side for a second, staring at them. This kind of scrutiny from one of her best friends made Akane feel uncomfortable. Daichi pulled a Polaroid camera from his bag and snapped a picture in their general direction. Akane didn't know why. The whole group had to be photographed together a week ago for the case report.

He removed the photo from the camera, still unexposed, and slid it into his back pocket.

The front gate creaked, opening up enough to let two people through at a time. Akane looked back at Masaru. Maybe they just opened it up like that so he wouldn't have to squeeze through.

Setsu went out first, followed by the others. Akane hesitated, then went through last. The door screeched shut the second she was clear. They started northwest, veering off the path that ran north. Akane somehow ended up in the middle of the group with Masaru trailing after her and Naoki and Daichi on either side. Li, Saburou and Setsu were at the front.

Akane could tell from the way Li was looking at Setsu that she didn't trust him.

They made good time, reaching the first point before the sun had risen. The first point was a small farming village. Akane remembered it. They had a nice inn near the center and the manager was generous enough to lend her some hand-me-downs.

The village was half asleep. There were some men heading into the fields, mugs of coffee in hand. The group passed quickly through, barely sparking notice from any of the villagers. Soon, they were trekking through thick forest. Akane noticed that there was already a path worn through the undergrowth.

"Do people come this way often?" Akane asked, ducking under a branch.

"Hmm? No, they don't, it's supposed to be a dangerous area," Setsu answered.

Akane frowned, looking down as she stepped over a fresh hoof print. Horses? She shook her head and looked off to the side, a motion, she noticed, Masaru followed. He stared that way, probably thinking she was seeing a threat or something. Akane snapped her attention back forward.

By about seven, they made it to the second land mark and the last one in Fire Country. It was an old statue that'd probably been there centuries before the first Hokage's grandparents had even been born. The statute was solid stone, decorated with traditional paint and some modern spray-paint graffiti, appearing to be what looked like a young man in drag, holding up a lantern. The group stopped for short water break. Akane didn't bother taking off her Bo, or even sitting down, because they were off again quickly as she expected.

As they past the border, the cover of trees dispersed, and they were soon walking in the humid grassy plains. There was no chance of using the landscape for defense if they were attacked, which is probably why Setsu suggested that they enhance their speed with chakra.

According to informant intell, the land of snow had been increasing it's protection. Most were civilians with guns and swords, nothing they couldn't get past.

However, the apparent goal of the mission was to get in completely unnoticed, and leave the same way. That meant hiding in plain sight.

They reached the civilian train station about nine, intermixing into the crowd. Akane and Li followed the sign pointing to the women's bathroom, separating from the men. The bathroom, in quite a need of cleaning, was happily empty. Akane slipped into a stall, put down the toilet seat lid with her foot, and hefted her bag up onto it. Unzipping the bag, Akane let the Bo down from her shoulder. She separated the pieces stuffed them into her bag, and pulled out an extra set of clothing.

Akane quickly pulled the pants on over her shorts and zipped the cropped jacket up over her tank; She tied her hair back and changed her sandals into running shoes. As Akane was putting her sandals back in her bag, a small insect crawled over her folded clothes. Recognizing the red insignia on it's back, Akane realized it was one of the Aburame's tracking bugs. There was an Aburame on the list of members on the rescue squad, and it must have been the easiest way to track them.

Akane waved her index finger at it in greeting and zipped up her bag. She shouldered the bag and stepped out of her stall. Li was at the mirror, applying heavy geisha make-up. She'd changed into a non-descript kimono and her bag was no where to be seen.

Li finished painted her lips and turned to Akane.

"I have your disguise right here," Li said, reaching into the inner-folds of her kimono. "Not that many people have such bright hair down here."

Li produced a paper seal. Akane held out her hand and Li wrapped it around her wrist. The characters on the paper glowed and the paper itself faded. Akane felt herself being engulfed in smoke, and when she turned to look in the mirror, she was sort of surprised.

Akane honestly expected maybe a change in skin tone and hair and eye color, but that's it.

Her reflection had short black hair, darker skin, and a thinner face with narrow black eyes. There was a burn mark across her cheek and nose, and her lips were chapped. She was taller, and anorexic skinny. She looked like she'd been through hell, meaning she'd fit in with the refugees.

"…Okay," was all Akane said, and then she left the bathroom. Li came out behind her and directed her towards the far side of the station, where Akane easily picked up on the men's chakra. As they neared, Akane could tell who she was being paired with by the clothing.

Daichi, Setsu, and Saburou were wearing outfits similar to Li: non-descript but noble looking clothing. Masaru and Naoki were wearing common travel clothing, like her. There'd been some make-up applied here and there to cover up the tell-tale facial tattoos associated with their families (the down facing triangles on Naoki's cheeks and the swirls on Daichi's), and Daichi's blond hair had been dyed brown.

Apparently, the plan was that, while both groups were going into Snow country, Akane's group would go across to the Village Hidden in the Waterfall to support the cover story that the group was merely going to investigate the disappearances of several large quantities of soldier pills that were supposed to be delivered to the major villages. The soldier pills had actually arrived, but it was the easiest way to gain access to the area bordering the snow country, where the factory was.

They were just supposed to have a quick run through of the factory, then circle around to provide any muscle needed from the north. Setsu had already acquired train tickets for everyone as a means of getting past the borders. The only difference was the his group would be getting off first. And that they had completely different cabins.

At a quarter to ten, a crackling voice was heard over the intercom. "All passengers on the F train into Snow Country, please board with your tickets ready."

Naoki pulled a small, thick strip of paper and a thin passport from his pocket, holding both out to Akane. Akane carefully took them and examined the name on the ticket. _Jin Lei _was printed on the top, followed by the time of departure and "One-Way". She opened the passport as they were walking. In place of an actual photo was a realistic artist rendering, a calling card of passport makers in Grass Country.

The group separated as they neared the boarding platform. Akane didn't watch where they went, trying to give off an air of not caring about the people around her. Her ticket was hole-punched before she boarded. No-one asked to see her passport, or even her ticket, as she neared the compartment marked on the back of the ticket: _Y_. Masaru slid the door open and went in before her.

It was clear this compartment was used for luggage at some point, maybe even for farm animals. A few rows of seats had been put in, probably from a car that was disposed of, and there was a constant smell of luggage cleaner and wheat. About ten dim electric lamps were hanging from the ceiling to make up for the lack of windows. The compartment stayed empty of any other passengers.

The train lurched forward precisely at ten. Masaru sat at the front, taking up an entire row to himself. Akane found a row in the middle and Naoki sat in the one behind it.

"Here," Naoki said, passing over a small package. "It's from Moe."

Akane ripped it open, peering inside. There was a plastic thing of Onigiri, maybe four or five, with a yellow Post-It on the top. Akane looked at the note. "Come back" was written on it in black marker, with a little smiley face beside it. She folded up the note and shoved it into her pants pocket. She opened the container and took one of the snacks out.

"She give you one for yourself?" Akane asked.

"Yeah, I already ate them though," Naoki replied. "Oh, and this."

He held his hand over her seat, dangling a charm on a string from his middle finger. Ah, Moe really was the type to give away good luck charms. He pulled it back and she heard him shove it into his pocket.

"Do I have to threaten you?" Akane asked.

"Huh?" Naoki sounded startled.

"About Moe. She's not good with breakups, ya know?" Akane said.

"I'll take that as your threat. Oh, good heavens, you have no idea how many people have been threatening me: Hideki, Umeko, Daichi, her dad, _my _dad." Naoki laughed. "I got most of it yesterday because Moe was doing a briefing up in Tsunade-land."

"What'd you do yesterday?" Akane asked. Setsu had suggested they relax the day before they leave, to avoid losing too much chakra or injuring themselves.

"I was getting a tattoo," was the simple answer.

"Really?" Akane questioned, "Did your dad sign for it?"

"No, he didn't have to." Naoki leaned over the seat and rolled up his sleeve. In the crook of his elbow was the kanji for "Dog" with a series of numbers beneath it.

"Identification tattoo," Akane noted.

Naoki nodded, rolling his sleeve back down. "Did you get one?"

"I already have enough identifying marks," Akane responded. She was the master of causing awkward silences.

"Umeko went with me. She's gonna get one before her next mission," Naoki broke it immediately. Akane bit into the Onigiri, tasting strawberry. She ate another one and closed the box. Someone in the compartment popped the top of a drink, but she didn't hear a sizzle. Naoki slurped on his drink loudly behind her.

"Speaking of Umeko," Akane started. "What did you want to talk to her about?"

Naoki put his head back to stare at the lamp above them. He played with something that looked like a cigarette tucked behind his ear. It looked like he wanted to light it, but there weren't any windows or visible vents, so Akane was thankful he didn't.

"I don't know," he finally said. "I had to work with her, you know, a few weeks back and she seemed really…out of it. She, uh, acted really shaken up when that first body was reassembled."

"The councilor?"

"No, one of the ones before you got back. His identity was released about a month ago. I asked her if she knew the guy, cause I think he was supposed to be a family member of a member of the council or something, you know, a blue blood," He paused and took another drink. "Well, anyway, according to decomposition or the sloppiness or something, they could tell it was the _first_ victim."

"What'd she say?" Akane asked.

"She didn't say shit. Not to me, anyway," Naoki answered. He sat back and she heard him take another drink. Akane lay down across the three seats of her row and put her arm over her eyes. She counted the minutes that passed, listening to the silence. She heard deep snoring from Masaru. About one in the afternoon, there was a screech and the motion of the train stopped. The intercom crackled to life.

"Good Afternoon," a woman's voice cooed, "this is the first stop in Snow Country. It is 10 degrees Celsius outside and flurrying, so be sure to put on your coats and hats before exiting the train. We will be leaving this station in twenty minutes. Have a great trip, and thank you for choosing Five Star Trains."

The intercom died out, a few sparks flying out from the wires behind it.

Akane sat up and unzipped her bag. She blindly groped around until she found her heavy jacket. Pulling it on, she turned off the light above her row and lay back down for some sleep.

Naoki woke her up a few hours later with a soft shaking.

"Hey, Red," he whispered. "You should get dressed, our stop is soon."

"What time is it?" Akane mumbled.

"About eight," Naoki told her. "The light in the very back is busted so you can change back there."

Akane sat up and shouldered her pack. Naoki moved out of her way, heading towards the front.

In the back, Akane opened her pack and retrieved, by touch, her chain mail, leggings, and the shirt and pants set. She stripped back down to her shorts and tank, pulling on the leggings and struggling into the chain mail. Akane strapped the shin guards on before putting her legs through the pants.

Akane laced up her boot, pushing her head and arms through the shirt. She finished strapping on the armor, zipping up her jacket. In the bottom of her bag, she found a knit scarf and hat she didn't remember putting in there. Akane zipped the bag up and threw the scarf over he shoulders.

Masaru and Naoki were talking in the front. From what she heard, they'd checked in while she was sleeping. When Masaru noticed her coming towards them, he pulled something from his bag and held it out for her. It was a thick envelope about the size of an identification card with her name scrawled across the front. Akane took it and pulled back the top. She tipped it over, emptying the contents into her palm.

It was a small chain with two identical plates on it. One held her name and serial number; the other had her blood type, place of origin, and rank.

"This sort of identification is required for entrance into the factory," Masaru told her. Akane saw that both of them were already wearing theirs. She fastened hers around her neck.

The train screeched to a stop a few seconds later.

"Good Evening," the same woman's voice crackled over the intercom. "This is the eighth stop, and the first in Waterfall Country. It's seven thirty-five at night and 13 degrees Celsius outside. Please remember to have your passports ready when you get off, as we have passed the border. We will be leaving the station in an hour. There is a restaurant available in the station and a hotel less than a mile away from the station. Have a good evening and thank you for choosing Five Star Trains."

Akane shouldered her bag and followed Naoki off the train. A burly officer in a uniform checked her passport before she was allowed into the station area. She went off to the bathroom to remove the seal as the official at the factory was giving her actual photo.

The trip to the factory was as quick as Akane expected. They arrived and were stared at while they looked over the reports. Masaru politely told the government official that all they needed was to see the verification on the forms to make sure the shipment was assigned the proper destination.

"Don't you think it was overkill coming all the way out here, then?" The official asked.

"No sir," Masaru answered. "We're just being as thorough as the Hokage wants us to be. So, if say, the shipment ended up in enemy hands without our knowledge, we'd be more open for criticism. See?"

The official laughed. "Ah, you're protecting your own ass, eh?"

Masaru shrugged, smiling. "And getting a few days off, too. We're not even expected back for another week."

"Where are you planning to spend that free time?" The man asked. Akane recognized the tone in his voice. The guy was bonding with her teammate. Great.

"Well, we heard that there's an under-the-radar gambling town about twenty miles south of here, in Snow country," Masaru told him.

"Ah, I know what you're talking about," the official said, giving a conspiring smile to Masaru. "But it's only eighteen miles. If you guys are ready to go, I can show you an unguarded way to it. That place gets raided all the time during the summer, so you picked a good time to visit."

"Where's this way?" Masaru asked.

"We call it the "Ice-bird trail". There's a path that starts a mile in. It goes for about a quarter of a mile above ground, then five underground. After that you get to the lake, which is frozen so you don't have to go all the way around. Then, it's a straight shot straight into the heart of Snow country," The official explained.

"Is this path safe?" Akane asked.

The official grimaced. "It _was_. Too many people know about it now. The safest part is the underground section. Just make sure you have a couple of nonflammable lights. That place is a giant mine of raw explosive material."

"Thanks," Masaru said.

"Thank you," The official said. "You just shortened my shift by about ten hours."

"Hey, Ni!" The official shouted. "I'm going to escort these Leaf shinobi back to their hotel. Tell Hanna that they leave in the morning."

"See you tomorrow!" The man, Ni, shouted back over the guard railing.

The official lead them out of the factory through a back entrance that Akane didn't notice before. Crossing the border was as easy as climbing over a shoulder height stone wall. They walked for about an hour and a half, the official taking them all the way to the beginning of the underground section.

He talked some more to Masaru, told him to say hello to some woman named "Misi" for him, and headed back the way they came. Naoki ignited a neon-red glow stick and went in first. Akane looked back up at the open sky over the snow, and follow him down the narrow opening. It expanded as they went, becoming an underground cavern.

Masaru loomed behind her, giving her the impression of being followed the entire time they were walking. As they walked, Akane noticed several nooks and crannies in the cavern, perfect hiding spots.

She heaved a sigh and massaged her own shoulders wearily. Oh, how much she'd love an energy drink right now. They were out of the underground section before midnight. As they stepped out of the most secure part of the trail, Akane at the sudden feeling of someone snapping their attention on her.

The feeling of being watched.

She surveyed the surroundings slowly. They were surrounded with evergreens covered in white powder. There were tons of shadows, millions of places she couldn't see. Akane narrowed her eyes. Then, she turned and fell into step after Naoki and Masaru.

It was so cold, her skin burned. Her own breath blowing back into her face felt like a fire. Akane quietly pulled her gloved on and buried her hands in her coat pockets.

But it was good.

Cold meant hibernating, which in turn meant quiet. And if it was quiet, it shouldn't be there. All the birds were in Fire country by now. Nothing to disturb the snow.

Akane found herself recording every slight noise that didn't come from herself or her teammates.

Within the hour, they reached the frozen lake. Masaru suggested taking a break. Naoki dropped about four more ignited glow sticks on the ground where a fire should have gone. Akane set down her bag and dug out the rest of the onigiri. She sat on the bag and opened the container.

Masaru produced a thermos from nowhere and passed it around. Strong coffee. From the way Naoki reacted, it probably didn't have sugar in it. Akane poured herself an entire cup when it was passed to her downed it as quick as she could. She still preferred energy drinks.

While they ate, Akane quietly scanned the area. Someone particularly…skilled in chakra use was very, very close. Akane recognized the signature, but couldn't place it.

They finished resting and stood. Akane scooped up one of the glow sticks from the ground and turned to face the lake.

"Red, you're forgetting your bag," Naoki said.

Akane ignored what he said. "It's sort of late in the season," Akane said, "Maybe we should test the ice before we go out on it."

Akane returned to her bag. She removed a wad of clothing, the insect inside screeching in alarm. Akane stripped the weight reducing seals off the weapons in her bag. It weighed several pound heavier when she picked it up.

Masaru was carefully walking out onto the ice before she even had it on, his hammer on one shoulder and two bags hanging from the other. He walked out a few yards, and bounced up and down on it a couple of times.

Grinning, he tossed Naoki's bag back too him.

"Feels sturdy to me," He said. Akane stepped out cautiously. She nearly slipped, regaining composure. Akane followed him about twelve more meters out before she heard Naoki's question.

"Red, are you just going to leave these here?" Naoki asked. Akane turned in time to see him bend down to pick up the clothes. "We can't leave anything behind."

Without waiting for a response, Naoki unzipped his bag and put the clothes in it. If he hadn't been zipping up his bag at the time, cutting through the silence with a solid 'zzzzz' sound, Akane thinks she might have heard the kunai whistling through the air. She thinks she might have seen the very dangerous shinobi gathering in the evergreens, preparing to slaughter them like cattle. She thinks she might have thought of a way to escape or attack or do _something_.

But no.

All she heard was the 'thunk' of it burying itself in the ice of the lake.

All she saw was the explosive tag on the end ignite, spinning and giving off smoke.

And all she could think was _Not again._

::::::  
I had this finished about 3/15, and I tried to set up a connection with a beta tester. I sent it out, and waited, and waited, and waited. And, after about a week or two, I just decided to finished editing it myself. ( I thought one of the requirements for being a beta was getting on to check your box) I would have posted it sooner, but I've been in the backwoods of Mississippi with no WiFi, so ain't anything been happening. Woo Spring Break!

I will finish with the next chapter as soon as I can bend it to go the way I want.  
~Sakiya


	13. One soldier down

Akane scrambled in the opposite direction of the bomb, making it only a few feet before the wave of the explosion smashed into her back. She was in the middle of falling, so the wave threw her in at a downward angle.

As Akane landed, feeling a sharp pain in her arm and the heat of blood flowing down beneath the clothing, the little clasp on her Bo strap decided to pop open, sending her best weapon almost ten yards out of reach. She immediately attempted to go after, but that wasn't a very good idea.

Akane heard it.

The others heard it.

Damn, old man Kakashi back home probably heard it.

The ice under their feet crack loudly.

Before she could react, Akane was plunged down into bone-numbing cold water. The bag around her shoulder dragged her down. Several bubbles of air escaped her mouth before she could stop herself.

Looking up, Akane watched in horror as chakra spread over the surface of the water, turning it back into ice.

Akane shoved off the bag and rushed to the surface. She slammed futilely into the ice wall, being painfully reminded of her arm. Akane clenched her teeth to keep from releasing more oxygen.

Something yanked her shoulder. Akane spun around, only to slam into Masaru. He pointed one finger up at the ice and made a few hand gestures. It looked like the hand language they learned, but Akane was more focused on the wisps of red floating up from her sleeve.

Abruptly, Masaru seized her, his mouth crashing against Akane's. Akane felt her lungs closing up, and realized he was taking her air.

Akane angrily shoved against him, kicking and elbowing herself out of his grip.

Her lungs felt empty and her vision swam with dots of light. Her chest burned and she stupidly opened her mouth before Masaru's hand clamped over it.

Masaru ran through a few one-handed signals and threw his head back. Black flames erupted from his mouth, heating the water, and thankfully close enough the surface to melt the ice before being extinguished. Masaru grabbed Akane by the front of her shirt and threw her up through the closing hole in the ice.

Akane swallowed the air now available to her, getting splashed with more cold water as Masaru came out behind her.

The sounds of struggle, metal on metal, flesh on flesh, flowed from the shore, where Akane made out at least six foreign shinobi and a few large canine-like animals. Masaru was up and charging towards the shore in seconds.

As Akane was scrambling to her feet, she noticed her Bo, lying in a bed of snow, less the a yard away. Akane scooped it up off the ground, and went after Masaru.

The battle, as small as it was, was very chaotic. There was all sorts of things flying this way and that, and Akane had to make sure she wasn't attacking a teammate before delivering several blows to a masked man.

He lunged at her, thrusting a dagger upward into her ribs.

Akane felt pressure beneath her ribs, followed by a snapping sound. The top four inches of the man's dagger clanked on the ground by Akane's foot. The man recoiled slightly, surprised. Akane took this chance to make a lunge of her own.

She leaped at him, driving her palm into his nose and her knee into his groin. The man landed roughly, blood flowing from under his mask Akane seized the tip of the dagger from the ground and pushed it into his exposed throat. The man convulsed, wrapping his fingers in a loose chunk of hair and yanking. He ripped the hair out, and Akane scrambled backwards. Hot blood was dripping down her scalp now.

"Watch it, Red!"

Akane spun on her heels and was shoved down to the ground by one of the canine beasts. It hurled itself at the shinobi who'd been behind her, unsheathing it's claws. The shinobi was dead in under a minute.

It was the last one, Akane realized, surveying the ground.

Masaru was crouched down beside Naoki's bag, holding a wireless headset to his head and speaking into it. Naoki had transformed back into a human and was starting to release the summing for his wolfs.

Akane allowed herself to crouch down as well. As the adrenaline levels in her blood settled down, Akane felt her body losing heat. The blood on her scalp and arm wasn't burning hot anymore.

"-attacked. Back up requested. I repeat-" Masaru's voice floated through the pounding in her ears.

Something heavy and warm was thrown over her shoulders. It was one of these old issue jackets, Naoki's from the smell.

"Hey, Red," Naoki started, snapping her attention to him, "are you okay?"

"A little banged up," Akane responded. "I didn't even get to use that jutsu."

"What jutsu?" Naoki asked. Akane noticed the front of his shirt was torn and bloody.

"The one my mom taught me."

"You just learn it?" Naoki bent and picked up a discarded kunai, rolling it between his hands.

Akane nodded.

"That's why you didn't immediately use it. It wasn't in your combat training, was it?"

Masaru interrupted with a grim, "They might have back up on the way. We try to move to a safer area. In case-"

"Shh," Naoki butted in. He turned his eyes to the trees above them, ears twitching slightly. "You hear that?"

"What?" Masaru asked.

"A bow being drawn." Naoki answered.

Naoki abruptly flung the kunai into the darkness above them. There was a crunching sound, like ribs breaking, and a low moan. A wooden bow clattered to the ground by Masaru along with an arrow. A small figured dropped from the tree branches after a moment. It looked like a teenager, wearing camouflage.

Naoki turned to face Akane, triumphant smile on his face.

His eyes widened after a second, face paling and smile sliding off. Even Akane heard the snaps of the second and third bow.

Boiling hot blood sprayed across her face as Naoki collapsed forward into her lap, two arrows buried in his spine. Akane had held up her arms to break his fall but only succeeded in ripping the dog tags off his neck.

Akane quickly ran through a set of hand symbols, throwing them palm out. A wall of chakra formed midair, between the trees and ground. Barely a second after the barrier formed, it was pelted with kunai and arrows.

Masaru retrieved a katana from the ground.

"Release the barrier on my side," He yelled.

Akane focused on her chakra outflow, putting more on the area of barrier directly above herself. The barrier around that area faded, disappearing completely. Masaru leaped up onto the trunk of the tree closest to him and ricocheted off into the brambles above.

There were several grunts and yells. Akane heard Masaru's katana blade hitting tree bark.

Her right arm thudded with pain from being held up so long.

A body, then two more smashed into the ground around the shield.

Masaru dropped down, bracing a wound on his chest.

"That's all that were up there," He said. Masaru bent and shouldered Naoki's bag. "There could be more. We should go back to the underground tunnel."

Akane dropped her hands, flinching. Naoki's blood was dripping on her pants and his breathing was extremely shallow. Akane eyed the arrows.

"Should we remove them?" She asked Masaru.

"I don't know. He's the medic." Masaru answered.

Akane carefully brushed one with her finger. Naoki flinched violently. Akane pulled her hand away quickly.

"Here," Masaru said. He held Naoki up so Akane could slide out from under him. She took Naoki's bag while Masaru pulled Naoki up and supported his weight. She absently shoved Naoki's dog tags into the pocket of his coat and followed Masaru back towards the tunnel.

The backup met them in the tunnel. Backup being a few fighters, a handful of medics, and Lee, who coddled over Akane for six minutes until the medic told him to back the hell off so she could get a good look at Akane. She recognized a few, like Yoshiro and one of the medics that cared after Akane when she was in the hospital last. A woman who looked about forty singled her out. Everyone who wasn't providing medical attention stood guard at either end of the group.

"Did you hurt your hand?" The woman asked, reaching for Akane's bloody gloves.

"It isn't mine," Akane admitted.

"Oh, I'm going to need you to take off that," The woman said, pointing at the chain mail. "And the shirt under it, too."

"Oh, my," the woman muttered when Akane had painfully done so. "Looks like an open fracture."

Akane looked down at her right arm. About an inch from her elbow, a piece of bone was jutting out from her skin, caked with dry blood.

"Oh, damn," Akane grumbled, flinching as rubbing alcohol was poured over the wound..

The woman pushed the bone back into Akane's arm, disinfected the area again, and stitched it up. She wrapped a bandage around Akane's arm.

The woman slid a stethoscope under Akane's undershirt, pressing it to her sternum.

"Breath in for me, sweetie."

Akane did so. The woman furrowed her eyebrows. She moved it upward, held it for a few seconds, then moved the stethoscope to Akane's back.

"There's something wrong with you lungs," She muttered.

"Fluid?" Akane asked, "Because that probably got there the same way my clothes got wet."

"No, it just sounds shallow, almost like someone with lung cancer would sound," the woman said. At Akane's alarmed look, she added, "It's probably just smoke damage from training with bombs. Do you have chest pains?"

Akane shook her head.

"Alright. We'll check that out in a hospital when we get back. Anywhere else, dear?" The woman asked.

"No," Akane answered. "Do you have any painkiller, though? My medication was in my bag, and that's at the bottom of the lake now."

"Wasn't my tracker in your bag?" Yoshiro asked from his post a few feet away, surprising Akane. He talked about as much as his father did.

"…I took it out. It's in Naoki's bag," Akane said slowly.

"Alright, sweetie," The woman said, pulling a set of folded clothes out of the bag at her side. "Go change into something dry, and give the wet clothes back to me."

Akane took the clothes and ducked into a little shadow covered cranny where she was comfortable that no one would see her. The woman had provided her with leggings, thick pants, a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and woolen socks. Akane changed completely as fast as she possible could, which was pretty fast when she considered how many people would be able to see her from just the right spot.

She took the damp clothing back to the woman, who gave her two aspirin, a sling for her arm, and a warm thermos. Akane picked Naoki's jacket up off the ground and hung it over one shoulder.

Akane walked over and carefully sat next to Lee, who was watching Naoki. She nudged him gently with her shoulder and offered the thermos. Lee waved it off.

"The arrows were poisoned," Lee told her grimly.

"Something they have an anti-venom for?"

"They cannot tell. They believe it was a mixture of poisons," Lee answered. "His back is turning purplish-black and he has the chills, so one of the poisons may have been snake venom. They gave him a serum to slow his heart beat, slow the venom spread, but-"

"He's not going to make it back to the village," Akane said. It was a statement, not a question.

Lee looked at her with the most helpless, the _only_ helpless, expression she'd ever seen him wear. He turned his attention to his hands. "I doubt it."

Akane unscrewed the top of the thermos and peered inside. Chicken soup. She put the lid back on and placed it between her and Lee, slowly leaning back against the stone wall behind them.

"When do we leave?" She asked.

"As soon as Masaru is stabilized," Lee answered. Looking over at Masaru, he added, "which might be a while."

Akane looked over at Masaru. Traveling wasn't exactly a smart thing to do with a gut wound and Masaru was close to blacking out when they reached the tunnel; There were four medics working on his abdomen alone.

Naoki muttered something, rolling his head to the side. Then his nose twitched.

"Hey, Red," He mumbled, cracking his eyes open to look at her. They looked bleary and bloodshot. "You didn't get hit, did you?"

A medic was on him in seconds, checking his vitals

"Of course not," Akane answered slowly.

Naoki turned his head back to look at the ceiling of the tunnel, swallowing thickly. "That's good."

3. 2. 1. Awkward silence commencing, only to be interrupted with a conversational "You know your smell changed?" from Naoki.

"Did it really? Just now?" Akane asked, eyes on the medic.

"Nah, before," Naoki said. "You used to smell like dirt, and plants. But when you came back, you smelled like metal and bleach. And fear, too."

Naoki blinked slowly. "That came off you in waves. Why do you think that was?"

He absently scratched his chest and swallowed thickly, waiting for a response.

"Well, yeah, probably because I was afraid for a while," Akane answered. "That being retrieved was a dream and I'd wake up in that cell again."

"Really?" Naoki asked. "I thought it was because of how insanely everybody was crowding you, ya know? But that's honest, I like that."

There was a long pause. He swallowed again. "Hey, Red?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you," Naoki started, "have that good luck charm Moe gave me? It was in my coat."

Akane dug it out and placed it in his palm. He closed his hand around it and smiled.

"This worked really well." At Akane's expression, he added, "For you. You didn't get hurt after you had it."

"I guess," Akane muttered. "You should rest."

"No, I want to stay up longer," Naoki told her. His tone was defiant, tired, but defiant.

"I can hear the strain in your voice," She said. "You need to rest."

Naoki was about to protest when Lee butted in, "Both of you need rest. So rest. That is an order."

Both Akane and Naoki muttered "Yes, Sir." at the same time.

Naoki closed his eyes, but Akane just started on the chicken soup.

"Akane," Lee started.

"I slept earlier," She answered, pouring a good amount into the top of the thermos. "I'm not tired."

"Very well," Lee said. "Finish that and I'll have them give you anesthetic."

It turned out emergency rescue hadn't even started out when they got the call, and pulled up the fastest vehicle to their disposal. Helicopter.

The Leaf Village apparently borrowed one from Sand Village earlier that month for some reason or another and kept it for an extra week, which, as Lee wouldn't stop exclaiming, was extremely lucky. Which also lead Akane to wonder what Leaf needed the helicopter for. Sand needed it to quickly transport shinobi and diplomats across the huge-ass, deadly desert that surrounds them, but the Leaf? Probably Tsunade taking joy rides.

Masaru and Naoki were loaded on tied to medical boards to stabilize them during flight. Lee, Akane, and a few medics climbed on. Two fighters road along while the remaining five set back to assist Setsu's team in Snow country in Naoki, Akane, and Masaru's place.

Akane, still groggy from the dose of anesthetic, peered quietly out at the landscape passing. What would have taken four days of traveling by foot merely took an hour and a half. They arrived at Konoha around three in the morning, where some of the most aggressive medics (Sakura's medic team) Akane has ever met greeted them by hauling their sorry asses straight to the hospital for intensive care.

Naoki and Masaru went straight into surgery, while Akane was dragged to a CT scan machine.

It would have been a traumatizing experience if Akane had been claustrophobic. Then she was taken to have her arm re-stitched and wrapped in plaster. The plaster covered from her shoulder to a few inches past her elbow. The nurses still advised her to try not to twist her wrist to drastically.

They assigned her an overnight room, to see if anything life threatening would appear. Akane was normally neutral when it came to optimism/pessimism, but she had a feeling that they were wasting their efforts on Naoki. He'd already started going into cardiac arrest when they'd landed and Akane didn't think pumping him full of as many anti-venoms as they could would make a difference.

Akane was sober, but not surprised, when the nurses informed her an hour later that he'd flat lined ten minutes into surgery. From what she heard, the medics spent almost twenty minutes trying to resuscitate him because his heart kept starting and stopping before declaring him dead.

Akane waited until the nurses changed shifts to open her window and lean out. A mild breeze passed her into the room, smelling like dust and fertilizer. She peered down towards the ground. Maybe 500 to 550 feet to the eave over the emergency entrance, then ten from there to the ground.

Akane calmly swung her legs over the sill, Naoki's dog tags in hand, and let herself drop. She focused her chakra to the soles of her feet in time to land in a swift crouch. She slid from the eave and dropped to the ground, rolling. Akane brushed herself off, and looked back up at the looming hospital. She spotted a figure on the roof, staring straight at her. Judging from the big afro that only hedge cutters could tame, it was either Yoshiro or another member of his clan. She idly waved, and leaped up onto the nearest apartment building, continuing building hopping until she reached Moe's house.

A brisk knock on the door was answered immediately, despite the fact that it wasn't even a decent hour yet. Tenten stood in the door frame, wrapped in a black robe, looking tired but alert.

"Akane?"

"Is Moe home?" Akane asked. Tenten nodded, and closed the door. A few minutes later, Moe answered. She had dark circles under her bleary eyes and her hair was a tangled mess.

"Akane? You're back early. What happened?" Moe questioned, yawning.

"Something bad," Akane said. She held out Naoki's dog tags. Moe took them, examining the metal plates.

"Wha-?" Moe rubbed the caked on blood with her thumb nail.

"I'm really sorry, Moe," Akane told her.

To her surprise, Moe held the dog tags back out for Akane to take.

"Moe?"

"You were his teammate when he died," Moe rasped, and Akane could tell she was about to cry. "You should keep them."

"Moe," Akane said softly, stepping closer to the younger girl. "I have my clothes. With his blood on them. I don't want anything else of his, trust me."

She was close enough to support Moe when she did actually break down into tears and help her back into the house.

At six, three medics appeared at Moe's door for Akane. The wordlessly escorted her back to the hospital for an MRI for head trauma (Someone apparently told the doctors they saw a red-headed girl go tumbling head first from a forth story window). The nurses were acting really stiff around her, but agreed to release her into her mother's custody about lunch time.

Tayuya was dressed in a white robe top over black pants with her hair twisted back behind a black bandana, which meant she came straight from work, probably on her lunch break.

They went back to the apartment for curry and ice cream (together in Tayuya's case, prompting Akane to wonder if she'll get weird cravings if she ever gets pregnant) where they avidly danced around the subject of what-the-hell-happened-while-you-were-gone-young-lady?!.

"When do you get maternity leave?" Akane asked as Tayuya whipped curry at a curry spot on her uniform.

Tayuya snorted. "When I go into labor. They were the same way when I was pregnant with you."

"You've been working for the same restaurant for sixteen plus years?" Akane asked, surprised.

"No, I've been working in the same district," Tayuya corrected. "It's all owned by one company."

Akane "ahh"ed accordingly as she put her dishes in her sink.

"Can you get your cast wet?" Tayuya asked.

"I…don't know," Akane admitted. "They didn't say."

"Call them and ask," Tayuya told her, shouldering her purse, the curry stain completely gone. "My lunch break is over. I'll be home by five."

Akane set down to write the official report of what happened, because she doubted Masaru would be able to for a few days. She just listed the order of happenings during the ambush from the initial bomb to Naoki and Masaru's injuries, and other figures such as the number of ambushers, what time they were attacked, and her own speculation that the shinobi had been lying in wait for them to make themselves vulnerable on the lake. They'd walked straight into a laid trap without realizing.

After finishing the forms, Akane sealed them in a manila folder and hand-delivered it to the Hokage's office. There was the usual awkward small talk as it was being looked over to make sure it was complete. She stopped by the hospital to pick up an antibacterial medicine and get information about the cast. They told her she could get the cast wet, but not to completely submerge it. Naruto still wasn't home when she got back, so Akane changed and got some sleep. But that didn't last long.

Naruto was waking her at four.

"Aka-chaaaaan! DoyouwanttogooutforRAMEN?" He squawked loudly in her ear.

"Wha-What?" Akane rolled over sleepily, not even hearing him. "Oh-kay?"

"Great. Go put on some shoes," Naruto told her, oblivious to the fact that she was wearing pajamas.

Well, Akane didn't care either, but that's really not the point. She just put her hair in a ponytail and slid on flip-flops.

They arrived quickly to their usual ramen stand where they ordered what they usually got. Jumbo crab for Naruto and spicy pork for Akane.

"So," Naruto attempted sadly, slurping the noodles loudly. "How was the mission?"

"Went to shit after just one day of traveling," Akane answered, being just as loud and messy as her father. "How was that one day we were gone?"

"Your mom beat me up with a frying pan and the toaster," Naruto answered, looking rather bewildered, most likely wondering how Tayuya got so skilled at hurting people with household appliances.

"Did you fight back?" Akane asked.

"Normally, I would have at least tried, but," Naruto started.

"Baby," Akane said.

"Yep."

At that moment, a group of teenage boys, from Sand by the looks of it, passed by, shooting looks towards Akane. She then saw Naruto fix them with the Daddy Glare of DEATH™, and laughed when the boys immediately got whiplash trying to look away.

"Do you know those guys?" Naruto asked after a second.

Akane glanced after them. "Nope," She said, starting on her second bowl. "Not even in passing."

"Oh," Naruto said, eating. He looked relieved. "I think one of those was Kankuro's kid," he added, but not enthusiastically, as he watched them turn the corner.

His head whipped to look at Akane and he sounded really nervous. "None of those guys were, er, heh, you type, right?"

"Dad, I don't even have a type," Akane said, slurping again. "I'm probably going to die a virgin."

Previous relief? Had nothing on the expression he wore now although it was coupled with slight discomfort. They attempted more small talk, but, eventually, both Uzimakis finished quickly, paid, and left. They managed to beat Tayuya home, but only just slightly. Akane retreated to her room for more sleep. She had to add sheets to her windows because it was still really bright outside.

Naoki's funeral was the next day. It was crowded, from old schoolmates and family members to everyone he'd ever been on a team/mission with. He received unusually high honors and his name on the killed in action stone. And, then, Akane realized this was the first funeral for a member of special forces she'd ever been to.

He'd been set to join ANBU right after the mission.

--

Akane and Umeko decided that Moe shouldn't be left alone for a while and had her agree to various sleepovers and activities over the next few days. The first sleepover was the night of the funeral at Akane's house.

Akane woke up around midnight, her side throbbing. She sat up, applying pressure with her fingertips. Looking around, Akane noticed she was the only one on the large jumble of sleeping bags, pillows, and sheets on her bedroom floor.

"Moe?" She asked, raising herself into a crouch. A beam from a flashlight passed over her from across the room. Moe was leaning against her closet door, a scroll spread across her knees. Akane crawled over, sat next to her, and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I couldn't sleep," Moe answered, rubbing her eyes. "I haven't been able to since you guys came back."

Akane felt herself sigh. "Do you want me to stay up with you?"

Moe shook her head. "I want to go to sleep, but I can't."

"Well," Akane started. "I still have some sleep medication from a few months ago if you want it."

"Sure," Moe said. "Anything."

Akane stood up and fumbled around her desk for the drawer. Finding it, she pulled it open and fished out the small pill bottle. Akane returned to sit by Moe, opening the bottle.

"Where's Umeko?" Akane asked, shaking out two tablets.

"I don't know," Moe answered, swallowing them dry. "She left about an hour ago, through your window."

Akane stood up, stretching. "Lay down, the pills metabolize pretty quick."

Moe shifted, moving towards the jumble on the floor. "What are you doing?" She murmured, laying down and adjusting the blankets around herself.

"I'm just going to find Umeko," Akane replied softly, pulling open her closet a retrieving, by touch, a pair of pants and a vest. She pulled the pants on over her pajama shorts and zipped up the vest over her tank top. Akane found a pair of sandals and slipped them on. Moe was asleep by the time Akane was opening the window. She carefully climbed up the side of the building to the roof.

Once up there, Akane inhaled deeply but Umeko's scent stopped a few yards past the backyard fence. Right by the fence was about six full trashcans, their smell made worse by the summer heat. Akane absently ran her hands through her hair, cringing her nose.

She walked to the edge of the roof, right over the fence and dropped down onto it. Akane then lowered herself onto the street, walking towards the middle of the village. After about twenty minutes, she remembered Moe back at her house and turned back. Umeko would come back, Akane was sure, at least by sunrise.

She climbed through her window and shed the pants and shoes. Akane left the window open and found a comfortable position on the floor.

When Akane woke, at sunrise, the window was shut all the way and Umeko still wasn't around.

* * *

_I am very sorry for killing Naoki, but I felt like I had to. _

_Also, there's a new link to a picture of Akane (just older) in my bio. _

_~Sakiya_


	14. Break down

**Oh we said some things that we can never take back,  
****It's like a train wreck tryna hit the right track,  
We opened up the wine and we just let it breathe,  
But we shoulda drank it down while it was still sweet,  
It all goes bad eventually  
- "Mean" - P!nk**

It was a dream.

The kind where you knew it was a dream because, really, how could it be real?

Akane thought it was nice though, peaceful.

She was lying on a large hammock, made of silk or satin or something of that sort, wearing a summer dress. But the entire landscape, as far as she could see, was covered in snow. The trees were bare, except for the two holding the hammock up. Those two trees were covered in bright orange and red leaves and the sky was reflective, like a mirror. A fire work shot up from somewhere and exploded in midair. The sparks reflected in the sky. Hundreds of sparks glared down at Akane and she could see large cracks running through the sky, marring its surface.

Akane smiled. The sight of the broken sky made her… not happy, but content. She didn't exactly know why, but it did.

There was a soft _drip, drip, drip _sound somewhere close. It sounded as if it were right below the hammock. Akane leaned over the side to peer beneath it. There was a scarlet puddle in the snow. Akane put herself upright and lay back against the hammock again, pushing the thoughts from her mind, thoughts that screamed unpleasant things inside her skull.

Something rough and cold brushed against her hand and stayed there. Akane wrapped her hand around the object. It was a hand. She looked down at it, examined it.

The hand was callused, masculine with large digits and a wide palm. The fingernails were long, broken, completely disgusting looking compared to her own short, smooth nails. Akane ran her fingers up the wrist, to the forearm. The skin was warmer there, but just slightly so. She traced the tattoo on the inside of the arm, a few inches from the crook of the elbow. Akane recognized the image, but she didn't know where from. She raked her brain, shuffled through all her memories, trying to place it.

The hand closed around her own so roughly that she squeaked.

"Pu-please, Aka…Akane…"

Akane looked up and immediately wished she hadn't.

Naoki stared back at her_._ Blood was smeared down the sides of his mouth and his skin was extremely pale. Akane squeaked again. Naoki seized her other hand and forced both of her palms to his chest. His shirt was sticky and Akane didn't even try to fool herself that the liquid seeping through her fingers wasn't blood.

"Please, Ak…ku…Akane, you…you _can't let me die_," Naoki choked out, fresh blood dripping over his lips.

Akane didn't know why, but she screamed so loudly that it hurt her own ears.

Akane sat up in bed, breathing as if she'd just sprinted three miles. Her hands were sticky and she panicked, reaching over the flip on her lamp. It was just sweat. She wiped her palms on her sheets and lay back against her pillow, trying to control her breathing. Recognizing the attempt as fruitless, Akane vaulted from her bed and opened her bedroom door as quietly as she could. The kitchen light was on.

Akane turned into the bathroom and run her hands under cold water. She pressed her hands to her face, over her eyes. Her own skin felt feverish. Akane splashed more cold water on her face and turned the tap off. It was no surprise that she'd had a nightmare, really. But, mostly, the nightmares were about a cell and a meat locker and syringes and screams. Akane guessed they were repressed memories or something. That psychologist they made her see told her that the memories might return but Akane didn't believe the man. But, since she got back from Snow country (the second time), they had and she hadn't gotten a decent night's sleep in days.

And that had been the first time she'd really thought about Naoki.

Akane turned the bathroom light off and returned to bed.

Last week, Moe had finally thrown something down (a plastic cup of lemonade, actually, but I digress) and told Akane she did not need babysitters walking eggshells around her. She assured Akane that she wouldn't commit suicide, would seek help if she became depressed, and would most certainly invite her to lunch every once in a while, but she needed to get back to work. Akane agreed to pass the message on to Umeko, whenever she saw her again, and went back to work herself.

She was back on the grave-yard shift (10 p.m. - 7 a.m.) from Wednesday to Sunday.

Akane realized that the door across the hall lead downstairs to a large, cellar-like room filled with rows of filing cabinets and metal shelves stacked with boxes that were filled with files. Her job was to catalogue and keep track of everything down there, help anyone who came down in locating a certain file, and delivering files to different department.

Okay, it wasn't that different from before. She hadn't even changed departments because she decided that going through another month of training was useless. The first thing she had to do was inventory. She was in the middle of her task when the phone rang. Akane rushed over and set the binder down on the desk before answering.

"Files and Records," She said into the receiver.

"Akane?" A voice on the other end asked. Akane recognized it.

"Setsu-sama," She said. "The mission went well?"

"…Yes," Setsu answered. "I need a few case files delivered."

Akane wedged the phone between her shoulder and ear and picked up a pencil. "Which ones?"

"Umm, let's see. 5048...5090, 5109, and 6002," Setsu responded. Akane repeated the numbers back to him off of the paper and he hung up.

The files were closer in the front, being newer. The first three were in the same filing cabinet and the last one was in a box on the shelf behind the desk. Akane piled them together and headed up to Setsu's office. The door opened up immediately when she knocked. Setsu stepped to the side and allowed her to enter. She went to put the files on his already cluttered and messy desk while Setsu returned to his seat behind it.

"I heard you were ambushed," Setsu said, casually.

Akane felt herself straighten up, fingers tightening around the files, and she glanced at his face. He was staring at her in the same way someone would look at something they'd like to eat. She felt like she was forgetting something she shouldn't have and his gaze started to make her feel uncomfortable. Then she realized she hadn't responded.

"Yes," Akane answered. "We were. Naoki's dead. Masaru's in extensive care."

"And you?"

"Relatively unscathed," Akane responded, finally putting the files down in front of him. Setsu reached forward and caught her left arm as she pulled back.

He turned it over, rubbing the pad of his thumb over the brand. Akane tried to pull against his hold, but he didn't even notice. She couldn't read the expression on his face. He mumbled something to himself, it sounded like a different language, and looked at her face.

He fixed her with another look that made her insides squirm before he asked, "Can you remember anything?"

His thumb was still heavily tracing the brand. Akane felt like he was a snake about to swallow her whole.

"Bits and pieces," Akane answered, pulling against his hold again. This time he released her arm. Setsu looked mildly disappointed at her response.

"You seem tired," He noted.

"Nightmares," Akane said. The disappointed look slid off, only to be replaced by the same stare he'd given her earlier. She made an excuse about the unfinished inventory and left, completely sure she felt his eyes on her back as she closed the door behind her.

After her shift, Akane went straight to the Hyuuga compound and asked to see Umeko. The housekeeper left her at the door before returning and telling her Umeko hadn't actually been home in a few days. After that Akane tried a few of Umeko's favorite training grounds.

She finally found the younger girl at the one just inside the forest. Umeko was leaning against a target stump, a black duffel bag underneath her legs. She had her eyes closed, sleeping.

"Hey," Akane greeted, standing over her. Umeko's eyes opened slowly. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, but didn't respond. "Where've you been?" Akane continued.

Umeko stood, stretching, before crouching back down by the bag. She answered quietly, "Just around."

Akane was about to say something, but stopped when Umeko pushed her bangs back from her face. Umeko's forehead was bloody and an angry red line went across it, promising to be a serious scar. Her seal was gone. The skin looked irritated, but Akane didn't see any traces of green left.

"When did you have your seal removed?" Akane prodded.

Umeko looked up sharply from the bag, shifting the strands of hair back in front of her forehead. Akane got the feeling she wasn't supposed to notice. Umeko looked back down, her hair blocking the view of her face, before she answered. "Yesterday. Someone found out how to trigger it, so they had to remove it."

She was lying, Akane could tell. But she didn't call Umeko out on it, just answering with an "ah". Umeko stood, shouldering the duffle bag and shoving her hands in her pockets.

"Listen, Uzimaki-" Umeko started.

"Uzimaki?" Akane asked.

Umeko closed her eyes, sighing heavily. "_Akane_," Umeko corrected herself. "I have a briefing for a mission later today. I have to go."

She brushed past Akane, avoiding eye contact.

"I'll see you later then?" Akane asked. Umeko froze in her tracks, glancing over her shoulder. She didn't answer and continued walking. Akane felt like she'd been in a fight with Umeko and the younger girl was still angry with her, but that was crazy. Was she still angry with Akane for taking the mission?

She'd have to talk to Hideki. He saw Umeko more than she did.

Akane easily located him in the training field behind his house. He was practicing kicks against a mounted dummy. She waited for him to finish before approaching him.

"Hideki," She said, drawing his attention.

"Hey, Aka-chan," Hideki greeted brightly, giving her a hug.

"I wanted to talk to you," Akane told him after he'd released her.

"You don't wait to jump the gun, do you?" He said, jokingly. At the expression on her face, he added, "Okay, what about?"

"Umeko," Akane answered. "Has she seemed a little off lately?"

Hideki paused to take a drink of water from his water bottle before he responded. "Yeah, but I just thought it was because Gaara's daughter's in town."

"She's in town?" Akane asked.

Hideki nodded his head. "Yeah, with her dad. The meeting's today."

It was? It'd totally slipped her mind. Oh, wait, Hideki was saying something.

"- and she's been crushing on the girl _forever. _She's probably just stressing out on how to ask her out," Hideki finished.

Akane arched her eyebrows. "So stressed she hasn't been home in days and looks like she hasn't slept in weeks."

Hideki furrowed his own eyebrows. "You saw her?"

"This morning," Akane said, absently rubbing her forehead. She glanced at her wrist watch and groaned. "Okay, Hideki, I guess I'll have to see you later."

"You've got somewhere to be?" Hideki twisted the top back on the bottle.

"Yeah, doctor," Akane answered, tapping her cast. She gave him a hug and left.

Halfway to the hospital Akane was starting to think scheduling an appointment right after a ten hour shift wasn't the smartest thing to do. She'd yawned almost the entire way there and had almost fallen asleep in the waiting room. They'd removed the cast and taken x-rays and everything. She'd been required to wear a sling until they put another cast on and was just falling asleep when the door flew open.

"Alright," Sakura said, entering the examination room. She had two x-rays, one in each hand. "You are definitely Naruto's kid."

"What?" Akane asked, groggy. Sakura held the x-rays up to the light for Akane to see.

"Your arm is almost completely healed. This kind of break would have taken almost two months for anyone else to heal naturally," Sakura said.

"I thought it was because of the medic's healing chakra," Akane said groggily.

"Well, no. The nurses who attended you aren't shinobi. Your mom checked you out before we could heal you," Sakura replied.

"I didn't notice," Akane said. She really hadn't been paying attention to what the nurses had been doing. They could've amputated her arm and she wouldn't have noticed.

Sakura unfastened the strap of the sling and tossed it on the cluttered desk in the corner. "You don't need this."

Akane stretched her arm out, flinching. Catching the expression, Sakura asked, "How does it feel?"

"Just sore," Akane answered.

"Alright," Sakura said, looking through the papers on her clipboard. "Have you been taking your antibiotics?" Akane nodded. "Do you need another prescription for pain killers?" Akane shook her head. "Have you been sleeping well?" Akane shrugged. Sakura leaned forward, examining Akane's face. "Did you go to sleep last night?"

"No," Akane answered. "I came here almost straight from work."

"Almost?"

"I was looking for Umeko," Akane explained. "I found her but she wouldn't talk to me. Is it true she hasn't been home?"

Sakura nodded. "I thought she was staying at your house. She wasn't?"

Akane shook her head, then quickly changed the subject. "How's Masaru?"

It took a few minutes for Sakura to respond. "…uh…he's fine, not conscious though. Everything seems in order so you can leave. There's a coffee shop by the gift shop."

Sakura was gone before Akane even registered what the older woman had said. She stared at the gaping open door, open-mouthed. What just happened? Just then she yawned. Akane grabbed her bag and headed down to the gift shop.

"You want _hot_ coffee?" the man behind the counter asked, incredulous.

Akane would've cocked an eyebrow, but was too tired. "Did I stutter?"

"You do know we're in the middle of a drought right?" The man continued. "You could die of heat stroke."

"It looks cloudy to me," Akane replied, nodding towards the window. A thick layer of clouds had rolled in from the north and blocked out all sunlight. The man just rolled his eyes and pushed forward a Styrofoam cup with a little cardboard sleeve. Akane paid and took the drink with her. She tried to got up and see Masaru, but the nurses wouldn't let her into the extensive care unit. They told her that he was very susceptible to infection at the moment and if she checked back in a few days, they might let her talk to him.

Akane downed the entire cup of espresso and milk while she was leaving.

As soon as she turned onto her street, she started digging through her bag for her house keys. After a few moments, she stopped walking and started to empty her bag of folders and random objects. She checked the front and side pockets. Then, she checked all the pockets on her clothing. Lint, knives, and change.

No keys.

Groaning, Akane realized that she must have left them in the desk at work.

She weighed her options. 1) she bangs on the door until Tayuya wakes up and opens it for her, probably resulting in extreme injury. 2) she climbs through a window and risks startling Tayuya, resulting in injury/death. 3) she drags her ass back to work, gets her keys, and comes home with little to no damage done to her.

Akane had heard all of Naruto and his friend's war stories about when Tayuya had been pregnant before. The terms "bat-shit crazy", "pissed off for no reason", and "soil-yourself violent" were used frequently.

Akane chose option 3.

Grumbling the entire way, she made it to the building in about fifteen minutes. She had trouble explaining to the girl on shift in Files and Records that she wasn't trying to steal any files. She was just there for her keys. The girl didn't even let Akane off the staircase until she flashed her I.D. and told the girl about how cranky she could be when she didn't sleep.

Akane retrieved her keys from the bottom drawer of the desk and made her way back up the stairs. She was _almost _out of the building when-

"Uzimaki?" A voice asked. Akane slowed down, but didn't stop. She settled for a quick glance over her shoulder. It was Yoshiro.

"Hey, Aburame," Akane said over her shoulder, keeping her pace. He was walking beside her before she knew it. Yoshiro furrowed his eyebrows and looked through a few papers on a clipboard in his hand. She'd heard that he and a few other shinobi had been assigned desk work after Naoki's funeral, though she didn't know why.

"You aren't listed as one of the people on my shift," He said quietly, like he was talking to himself.

"I just came back for my keys," Akane responded, holding the key ring up as proof.

They left the building, apparently without him noticing.

Yoshiro wrote something on a piece of paper on his clipboard and then flipped to a page near the back. Akane was just about to turn onto a side street and leave him when he looked up and asked, "Are you going to sit in on the council meeting with your father?"

Because they hadn't turned when Akane had wanted, they continued down the street into the residential area just bellow the Hokage monument.

"I wasn't going to," Akane mumbled, stifling a yawn. Another yawn followed it. Akane rubbed her eyes with her thumbs.

"You're tired." It was a statement, not a question. His eyebrows pinched together again, but the rest of his face was straight. "How long have you been awake?"

Akane thought about her answer. It took her longer to come up with one than normal. She'd made the mistake of not taking a nap before coming on for work and that plus her shift and the three hours she spent looking for Umeko and at the hospital equaled… "Almost twenty-three hours."

His nose wrinkled in what she guessed was disapproval.

He opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but whatever it was, Akane wouldn't ever know.

There was a deafening sound just above them. Akane and Yoshiro immediately ducked down as small rocks and dust rained down onto the street. Akane looked up in time to see the second explosive tear through the Third Hokage's face. Akane cover her head with her arms to protect against the much bigger rocks pelting downwards at them. In this position, Akane heard the third and forth explosives go off.

She heard the sound of rock grinding against rock and looked up to see a large portion of the First Hokage's face start crumbling. The rest of the monument was developing dangerous cracks and looked ready to fall to pieces.

Akane's first instinct would have been to run into a neighboring street, but she realized that the five streets over on either side were going to receive just as much damage as the one she stood on now.

Akane began working through the hand symbols for a chakra shield. She could hear Yoshiro behind her, arguing with someone over a walkie-talkie. The person on the other side was panicking, trying to get teams to the top of the monument to retrieve the Hokage and council members while Yoshiro was trying to convince them to send a team to evacuate the residential area under the monument that was about to be pulverized.

Akane had just got the shield up when the Second and Third Hokages completely crumbled off and started smashing the building around them. Large pieces of rock crashed against her shield, breaking up into smaller chunks and sliding off.

The arguing behind her got louder.

"-Of course I know what kind of damage is happening! I'm in the fucking middle of it!"

Akane felt weak, her energy draining quickly. Her shield flickered slightly as another large piece landed on it. She felt as if she were going to pass out.

Lightning streaked the sky and it started raining really hard.

Akane looked up at the monument to see if anymore of it would crumble and fall. With extremely large chunks of the monument missing, it was easy to see the mansion from straight bellow. It was aflame with inky black smoke billowing out of it, the rain having almost no effect on the fire. There was a figure close to it. Akane focused on it as hard as she could. It was a woman with two large scrolls over her shoulder. Light from the fire illuminated her face.

Akane felt extremely weak and dazed, only realizing after a second that she recognized the woman.

It was Umeko.

She swayed haphazardly, arms dropping, and the shield faded. The rocks that had been sitting on the shield crashed down around them. Yoshiro said something about moving and his hands wrapped tightly around her upper arms, pulling her forward. Akane felt her eyes start to roll backwards into her head and her senses dulled. Everything went black.

___________

Okay, you guys, I had this finished _at least_ two weeks ago. I have no idea where my Beta is, or even if she's alive. I sent it to her a while back, right after I finished it, but I haven't heard back yet. Since it's seriously been a couple of months since I posted a chapter for this, I thought I'd edit it myself and get it the hell up.  
I'm extremely sorry that it took so long to write. I got writers block with this one. I knew where it was going to go but not how to get it there. I could give you a million and one excuses (not involving my Beta, she was actually very helpful) but I'd rather not. I need a few ideas, so if anyone has any, I'd like to hear them.

~Sakiya

(again, sorry)


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